05/03/2009
As the SUNY Cortland campus community strives to reduce its impact on the environment, the campus Facilities Planning, Design and Construction staff are in the process of completely updating the College's heating systems in order to save energy.
At SUNY Cortland, heating accounts for 33 percent of its overall energy use when compared to the other areas that the College calculated: electricity, transportation, food and office paper.
The College community is trying to reduce its carbon footprint, which, according to the College's Web site, is an inventory of all greenhouse gas emissions associated with the actions of an individual or organization.
SUNY Cortland President Erik J. Bitterbaum signed the Presidents' Climate Challenge two years ago, setting into motion a chain of events designed to make the College carbon neutral along with more than 625 other colleges throughout the United States.
Being carbon neutral, or having a net zero carbon footprint, refers to achieving net zero carbon emissions by eliminating carbon emissions where possible and balancing any carbon released with an equivalent amount sequestered or through carbon offsets.
"The College has one of the oldest heating infrastructures of the SUNY system," said Timothy Slack, who has directed the physical plant for four years. "It is from the 1950s and was designed with about a 30-year life expectancy."
By using the current steam plant, the College's heating infrastructure is only 60 percent efficient, Slack noted. As it runs through the underground piping to various locations throughout campus, it loses another 10 percent, resulting in a 50 percent efficient heating system.
"Instead of doing a typical upgrade, we will be installing 'satellite' boilers in each of the 18 academic buildings and the 16 residence halls," said Slack.
The new high-efficiency condensing boilers are 95 percent efficient and no heat is wasted through transportation, he added.
Technology has changed significantly since our central plant was built," said Joe Woodin, capital projects manager of the College. "One factor we considered when making the decision to go from steam to hot water heating and then to 'satellite' hot water was that we do not have the heat demand or need steam for processes that typically make central steam systems a good choice in today's world."
"We will be taking a quantum leap," said Slack, who predicts that all the changes will be done within four to six years. "We will save about a third of our carbon output in heating. This would conserve enough in natural gas to underwrite the cost of 100 percent green electricity for the campus. Green energy, such as energy from windmills, costs about 20 percent more than regular electricity. The result is that the College could cut its overall carbon footprint by half in just four years."
For any new construction, including the Student Life Center and the renovations to Studio West, the College will use a geothermal heat pump system, which has extremely high efficiency.
A geothermal heat pump system is a central heating and/or air conditioning system that actively pumps heat to or from the shallow ground. It uses the earth as either a source of heat in the winter or as a coolant in the summer. This design takes advantage of moderate temperatures in the shallow ground to boost efficiency and reduce operational costs.
"These additions and renovations to Studio West are currently the most green and carbon neutral system on the market," Woodin said. "We will certainly consider using this method whenever the resources and field size are available."
"No one thought this was possible two or three years ago," Slack said. "It seemed like an insurmountable issue to reduce our carbon output as quickly as we are. But once we started working on it we figured out solutions and built ideas with one another to find a way to become a carbon-neutral campus, hopefully sometime in the near future."
For more information, contact Slack at (607) 763-2101 or at timothy.slack@cortland.edu.