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Building Level Sustain

Building Level Sustainability Program (BLSP)

A Platform for Schools and Departments to Implement Sustainability Practices at a

Building Level

Vol. 2: Pilot Project Reports

Rollout Contact:

Jiffy Vermylen

Stanford University

Revised February 2011

2 Building Level Sustainability Program 2010

Acknowledgements

We thank sustainability professionals in various operational and academic departments who contributed to the creation of this program. This program has been built in partnership with:

• Sustainability & Energy Management (Land, buildings and Real Estate) • Zone Management (Land, buildings and Real Estate) • Stanford Dining (Residential and Dining Enterprises) • Peninsula Sanitary Services Inc • Students for a Sustainable Stanford (student group) • Green Living Council (student group) • Woods Institute for the Environment (academic institute)

The concepts and business cases have greatly benefited from the pilots and their leads as well as expert advice from the Sustainability Working Group and Communications Sustainability Working Team.


Table of Contents

Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................................... 1

Section 1: Building 170 .................................................................................................................. 4

Section 2: Frances Arrillaga Alumni Center ................................................................................. 12

Section 3: IT Services ................................................................................................................... 17

Section 4: School of Earth Sciences ............................................................................................. 25


Section 1: Building 170 – Inaugural Pilot (February – April 2009)

Building 170 is a four floor administrative office building in Stanford’s Main Quad (01‐170). It is home to Public Affairs, the Provost’s Budget and Faculty Affairs offices, and the Office of the General Counsel. < http://campus-map.stanford.edu/index.cfm?ID=01-170>.

Purpose of the Pilot • To explore the potential for resource conservation through local and individual action in

a relatively small and simple (non –lab) office building, with an eye toward applying the lessons learned from this pre‐pilot campus‐wide, including departments and schools that span across buildings.

• To engage administrative departments in the process of leading by example.

Results • In a month to month comparison with 2008 data, Building 170’s 2009 electricity

consumption (during the pilot period) showed a 16% reduction in February, a 19% reduction in March, and a 22% reduction in April.

• Adjusted for other trends in the building’s electricity consumption, payback of the relatively modest investments involved in the pilot (for smart strips and timers) is estimated at less than a year.

• Even after the completion of the pilot period, electricity usage for the remainder of the calendar year remained approximately 20% below 2008.


Figure 1: Pilot Period and Beyond Electricity Usage

Key Steps This pilot project in Building 170 was discussed with the Sustainability Working Group, the Communications and Community Relations SWT, and was coordinated by the Office of Sustainability and the Evaluations SWT chair. Given current budget realities, Green 170 was designed to focus primarily on encouraging local electricity conservation measures that would have the additional benefit of saving the University money.

Step 1: Commitment and Team

Building 170 ad hoc green committee

• This pilot was initiated by Tom Fenner, Deputy General Counsel and Chair of Evaluations Sustainability Working Team

• Building 170 is inhabited by four units, and a representative for each departmental unit was enlisted with his or her consent:


• Legal Office (the third floor, along with some space on the second floor and the basement level) Rep: Tom Fenner

• Provost’s Budget Office (the second floor) Rep: Paul Goldstein

• Public Affairs Office (the first floor) Reps: Kate Chesley, Enelda Wade

• Provost’s Faculty Affairs Office (the basement level) Rep: Scott Walters

• Department IT crew was contacted

• University sustainability staff was engaged:

• Fahmida Ahmed, Office of Sustainability

• Joyce Dickerson – Director, Sustainable IT

• Susan Kulakowski – Manager, Demand Side Energy Management

• Julie Muir – Manager, Campus Recycling

Step 2: Audit, Assessment, Target

Basic Statistics • The building was retrofitted and renovated within the past ten years.

• The data on energy consumption and utilities are kept for the building as a whole, and Building 170 is considered as a single unit for purposes of the ECIP program.

Utilities Consumption Report (month of Feb 2008) - electricity use 10,386 KWH (daily average 346 KWH) - steam use 62,051 lbs (daily average 2068 lbs ) - waste sewer use 7863 gallons (daily average 302 gallons ) - domestic water use 7863 gallons (daily average 302 gallons) - chilled water 853 gallons (daily average 28 gallons)

Total utilities cost in a month: $3,264

Energy Conservation Target: a 10‐15% reduction in electricity use in February through April 2009 (compared to the same monthly periods in 2008).

Steps Taken: • A walk‐through assessment/audit of Building 170 was undertaken in December 2008 by

the local green team and sustainability staff. The focus was on noting current practices,


and on identifying energy saving and waste reduction opportunities, including shutting down of an unneeded fan coil in a decommissioned server room.

• Office of Sustainability staff took notes that formed the basis of an action plan. See Green Action Menu.

• A subsequent meeting then occurred involving Sustainable IT lead, a Green 170 rep, and the local Information Technology representatives, to discuss desktop power management installation and the use of smart power strips (which cut off power to peripherals when, for example, the computer is turned off). Smart strips (and later timers) were thereafter distributed, and the IT representatives began the process (in early 2009) of implementing the action steps (with a particular focus on power management, smart strips, sleep settings and thereafter timers).

• In addition, lighting levels were assessed and adjusted where appropriate, and several incandescent bulbs were replaced with CFL’s . Excess equipment (including one copier and some rarely used printers) were unplugged, and some energy inefficient equipment was replaced with Energy Star equipment.

• Building 170 then implemented the Deskside Recycling (currently in place in over 50 buildings on campus), where custodians reduce trash pick‐up from individual offices to one day per week (while maintaining daily service to common areas) and pick up recycling in individual offices one day per week. Blue recycling containers were distributed to the offices on some floors.

Step 3: Publicize and Launch The Green 170 program was announced to building occupants (by the floor representatives) to begin in February 2009. Announcements were made in staff meetings, in email communications, and on signs posted on kitchen refrigerators and office exit doors (See Appendix C for examples). Additional signs were posted in existing recycling and trash areas on each floor (See Appendix D).

Step 4: Conduct Pilot Once the pilot started, periodic meetings were held by the Green 170 team (to discuss implementation progress, opportunities and issues), and by Sustainable IT with a Green 170 representative and the local IT personnel.


Note that no control group for Building 170 was available, given the uniqueness of each campus building and its use. The team continued to analyze data from other buildings, as well as data from Building 170 from the period before the initiation of the pilot program – in order to seek to isolate the effect of the action steps taken.

Step 5: Assess and Recognize This effort is scheduled to be recognized as the founding pilot in a Sustainability Working Group meeting, and publicized in Stanford Report < http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/october5/green-alumni-center-100909.html>.

The Office of Sustainability has already shared the results at a Ivy Plus consortium presentation, and will use the lessons from the pilot at other sustainability evaluations.

Pilot Budget and Payback

Prior to payback calculation, the team looked into factors other than Green170 efforts that might have influenced the results. Based on a three year (years 2007, 2008, and 2009) daily average KWH for building 170 for revealed that the building in general was experiencing an daily average of 8% (or approximately 840 KWH per month) drop due to potentially efficiency improvement in the building (i.e. the server room was decommissioned 2 years ago, the remodel of the second floor was done last year).

The KWH savings (actual and estimates) were adjusted for this observation to yield a conservative estimate for total savings due to the Green 170 measures. Despite the adjustment, the payback calculations revealed a simple payback of 11 months, making a case for a rather attractive investment. (See figure 3 in the next page.)

The average kWh/month savings for this effort is 1,980 KWH.

Factors not measured: • The following factors typically relevant for a full business case have not been measured.

However, for the purposes of the pilot, the teams agreed that the likely unmeasured ‘costs’ and ‘benefits’ are of equal magnitude.


• Unmeasured costs – Total FTE hours spent on these pilots (thus far it has been considered a volunteer effort; for larger implementations FTE resources should be considered).

• Unmeasured benefits – Employee satisfaction and productivity

Figure 2: Payback Calculation

Lessons Learned

In terms of lessons learned from the Green 170 pilot, here are some of preliminary ones that have informed the general program approach.

• The pilot’s success greatly depends on the dedication and focus of the pilot leader. In this case, the pilot greatly benefited from a knowledgeable and experienced leader.


• It takes time and effort to get all the steps implemented. Quite a bit of local follow‐up and nudging is required. Though the pilot was intended to begin on February 1st 2009, implementation of the action steps continued over the months of February and March. Indeed, [due to varying levels of individual interest and commitment] perfect implementation was never completely achieved.

• On the waste reduction side, the new Office Recycling Program seems to have provoked no major reactions. One step we wish we had taken was to have performed a pre‐pilot audit to establish a baseline for trash and recycling before beginning the new program. This would be a recommendation for the next pilot.

• An expenditure of effort plus a relatively minimal expenditure of money (for smart strips and timers) can yield significant savings with a fairly short payback period, estimated at less than 12 months with conservative savings estimates(See Pilot Budget and Payback section) .

• Self‐perpetuating systems (such as desktop power management, sleep settings, occupancy sensors, timers) are the best. Set it once, and the savings can continue. (In this regard note that the “Green” setting on Big Fix is not very aggressive. Additional savings are available with Super Green and Custom with no adverse effect on most users.)

• The local Information Technology personnel are key members of the team. Some in fact are either onboard already or get excited by the opportunities, and take these ideas to other clients on campus.

• Personal contacts and the personal relationships between the green team members and their office colleagues really help the level of participation and cooperation. And it is a major benefit to have local eyes to notice and follow up on situations where copiers, computers, electrical equipment, and lights are left on when not in use.

• It is very satisfying to walk through the office at night or on the weekend, and have there be no unnecessary computers, copiers, printers and lights on!


Section 2: Francis Arrillaga Alumni Center (Launched in September 2009)

Building Size: 118,572 SQFT

Purpose of the Pilot “Green Fran” Led by Matt Williams (Director Alumni Center Facilities & Services), this enthusiastic project set high goals in resource conservation, and aimed to contribute economic savings towards the budget plan. The project recruited a “green team” of individuals who work in the center, discussed ideas and prepared an all‐staff presentation to kick‐off the program.

The kick‐off presentation highlighted electricity consumption and budget impact and also educated staff on the volume of consumables they use in their daily office life. Key statistics were shared on items such as paper, toner, compostable cups, and bottled water. The key goal was to educate staff to motivate them to think and conserve, thereby reducing costs and landfill waste.

Green Fran was also an opportunity to highlight sustainability efforts from a high profile campus facility which is home and host to many events which attract both alumni and academic community.


Actions Taken

• The Green team consisted of 8 team members with representatives from Stanford Alumni Association & Office of Development. They started with a “green team” luncheon and building tour which included campus sustainability experts from ITS, utilities and waste management. Building residents and expert partners had a chance to engage and discuss sustainability ideas.

• The team helped deploy 24 SmartStrips, 22 timers, 44 motion‐sensor/ timer light switches, 6 water filter systems, purchased 50 mugs to replace disposable cups.

• Completed and all staff presentation with an introduction by Howard Wolf, Alumni Association President. Key statistics and visuals were shared and many staff left with a “buzz” about the program.

• The technical support team implemented improved power saving settings on equipment and created an evening back‐up and shutdown script.

• The Centers’ event team made renewed efforts to tighten event HVAC schedules and more closely monitor open exterior doors and turn‐off unnecessary lighting.

Results • In a month to month comparison with 2008 data, the pilots’s 2009 electricity

consumption (during the pilot period) showed a 7% reduction in September, a 8% reduction in October, 11% reduction in November and 8% reduction in December 2009. The average electricity consumption savings was 8+%.

• Adjusted for other trends in the building’s electricity consumption, payback of the relatively modest investments involved in the pilot (for smart strips and timers) is estimated at 4 months.

Pilot Budget and Payback Prior to payback calculation, the team looked into factors other than Green Fran efforts that might have influenced the results. Some elements that coincided with and were in part triggered by the pilot process were: tech support changing settings on equipments; and new evening back‐up/shut‐down script which routinely shuts down 150 computers; and better event space management (HVAC and lighting). Similarly, the building has also recently added motion sensors and timers to lighting systems throughout the building as well as timers on office equipment such as copiers and water coolers. Lobby area fixtures have


been changed and nearly all of the facilities lights save some dimmable fixtures are now CFL. Those estimate KWH savings are factored in.

Based on a daily average KWH for the pilot revealed that the building in general was experiencing an daily average of 8% (or approximately 840 KWH per month) drop due to potentially efficiency improvement in the building .

The average kWh/month savings for this effort is 10,650 KWH.

The payback calculations revealed a simple payback of 3 months, a remarkably attractive investment (See figure 1). In addition to the energy savings calculated in payback, additional savings and benefits of the pilot have included:

• Water filter systems required $ 3937 upfront investment, but saved $6000 in annual water bottle purchases, not to mention the associated waste reduction.

• Mugs cost $99.50 but will yield est. annual savings (from compostable cups) of $1800

• Paper: No purchases were made but orders are down 20% from double sided prints and careful usage with estimated annual savings $2600.

• With a rolling start final fiscal year end savings may be even greater.


• Unmeasured costs – Total FTE hours spent on these pilots (thus far it has been considered a volunteer effort; for larger implementations FTE resources should be considered).

• Unmeasured benefits – Employee satisfaction and productivity. Many staff had no idea how much they consume and were happy and proud to support this effort.

Lessons Learned

• Education works! And helps people to be receptive to change that they may not otherwise be receptive to. Some may even adopt and help promote.

• Information on metrics and savings played a strong role. Dollar savings numbers were encouraging and motivating since they were directly tied to the building/department budget. Many staff also found the information enlightening; they had no idea of how much they consumed and how small changes in their daily office life could make a big difference.

• There is a mix of use for motion sensors/timers depending upon the use of the space and cost effectiveness. For example restroom and conference rooms would use motion sensors while mechanical and storage spaces would use timers.

• The team now plans to expand the program and all that we’ve learned to our off‐campus facility, 3330 Hillview Ave.


Section 3: IT Services - First Department Level Pilot (Launched August/September 2009)

Purpose of the Pilot Lead by Matthew Ricks (Executive Director, Computing Services) and Joyce Dickerson (Director, Sustainable IT), IT Services rolled out the Building‐Level Sustainability program to nine buildings in the department. The purpose was to test the program at a department‐level in order to understand the communication, coordination and investments necessary when deploying to collection of independent and very different buildings. The pilot focused primarily on savings related to desktop computing that would reflect in kWh daily usage. The nine buildings in the pilot were Forsythe Hall, Pine Hall, Puichon, Polya Hall, Redwood Hall, Spruce Hall, Acacia, Oak and Laurel.

Members of IT Services Green Team

Actions Taken The IT Services Green Team had 36 staff members, and included at least 2 representatives from each of the buildings building. They met weekly to learn about green building management, discuss accomplishments, and share challenges.


From July 15 to September 15, 2009, the team members and their colleagues deployed 263 SmartStrips, 55 timers, 22 motion‐sensor light switches, 15 filtered water‐coolers, and one VendingMiser for the vending machine. With the help of CRC Desktop support, IT Services moved all backup and patching from night‐time to daytime so they could then place computers in sleep mode at night. Ultimately, 60% of their desktop/laptop computers were set to Stanford SuperGreen, which turns of the monitor after 10 minutes, and puts the computer into Standby after 30 minutes of idle time, and the rest were set to Stanford Green, which turns off the monitor after 15 minutes.

Pilot Results The results of the pilot are shown two ways: through building energy intensity measures (kwh savings/day/square foot) as well as overall % reduction.

1. Comparison by Energy intensity – watt hour/square foot Comparing year‐over‐year wH/day/square foot savings between 2008 (control group) and 2009 (pilot group) was an effective way to discern the actual impact of the Building Level Sustainability Program in a department setting. One of the lessons anticipated from this multi‐building pilot was the difficulty of comparing energy efficiency across buildings that are used in different ways. In the case of IT Services, the base load energy use for each of the buildings varied widely based on whether the building had a datacenter in it, was used for Software Development, or was primarily an office building. Additionally, since the buildings ranged from 1700 square feet to 31,000 square feet, normalizing to wH/day/square feet helped to illuminate the energy intensity of a particular building. The findings suggest that: • Significant Decrease: The 3‐month average energy consumption intensity decreased from

2008 to 2009 for 4 buildings (Pine, Puichon, Acacia and Laurel) by a noticeable amount, with the two highest savings from Acacia and Laurel. These savings, we believe, are due to the pilot program.

o Acacia and Laurel, with 16% and 13% savings respectively, are small buildings that had committed and focused Green Team members. They were proactive in their buildings to ensure SmartStrips were installed correctly, motion‐detector lighting was installed, timers were put on copiers and other office equipment, and computers were put to sleep at night.


o Puichon, at 5%, was an impressive reduction since the Cable Network infrastructure is in that building making it an Energy Intensive building (wH/day/square foot in Puichon is approximately 4x what it is in Acacia and Laurel). As with Acacia and Laurel, the Green Team members in Puichon were passionate and committed to the effort, so proactively made changes and verified installations were completed correctly. This Green Team Member dedication is, we believe, one of the main reasons these 3 buildings had such successful results.

• No significant impact: The 3‐month average energy consumption intensity stayed almost

the same between 2008 to 2009 for 4 building (Forsythe, Redwood, Spruce, Polya). The reasons for this flat performance depend largely on the building use.

o Forsythe Hall houses a 20,000 square foot datacenter, and the wH/day/square foot for Forsythe is more than 11x that in Acacia & Laurel. Nearly all of this is energy used in the datacenter, which was not affected by this pilot, so this result is not compared.

o In contrast, Redwood, Spruce and Pine are more typical IT Services buildings, but the Green Team members from these teams were not able to focus on the pilot project nearly to the degree that the Acacia/Laurel & Puichon teams did. Consequently, SmartStrips were distributed, but not necessarily installed, monitors continued to run all night, and lighting retrofits were not requested.

• Significant Increase: The 3‐month average energy consumption intensity increased

between 2008 to 2009 for 1 building (Oak) by a noticeable amount. Oak is a bungalow, similar to Acacia/Laurel, and had the same Green Team as in Acacia/Laurel, so we would have expected the results to be similar to those buildings. However, rather than having energy use decline 13‐16%, it increased 32% from Fall 2008 to Fall 2009. There was construction being done in Fall 2009 and many of the construction equipments used the outlet outside Oak.


2. Comparison by Overall % Energy Use By Building • In a month to month comparison between 2008 and 2009 data, the pilots’ 2009 electricity

consumption (during the pilot period) showed a 4%, 5%, 2%, 2%, 16% and 13% reduction for Pine, Puichon, Redwood, Spruce, Acacia and Laurel, respectively. These favorable trends, expressed in a 3‐month average, are consistent with the observations related to reduction in energy intensity.

• While the % savings in most of the buildings are small, since the energy intensity of the buildings is large, the actual kWh/month savings are large. In total, if we exclude Forsythe and Oak, the average kWh/month savings for this effort is 3224 KWH.

Month to Month Percentage Savings (Consumption) Comparison ‐‐ 2009 vs 2008Forsythe Pine Puichon Polya Redwood Spruce Acacia Oak Laurel

January 22% ‐12% 2% 0% ‐12% ‐12% ‐43% ‐14% ‐3%February 23% ‐7% ‐2% 2% ‐12% ‐12% ‐2% ‐6% 3%March 12% ‐3% ‐1% 6% ‐9% ‐9% 12% 4% 3%April 24% 0% 0% 5% ‐12% ‐12% ‐20% ‐1% 29%May 21% 2% ‐2% 7% ‐4% ‐4% ‐16% ‐20% 46%June 22% ‐2% ‐1% 2% 2% 1% 7% ‐19% 38%July 19% ‐7% ‐4% ‐15% ‐9% 2% ‐14% ‐20% ‐1%August 15% ‐1% ‐5% 0% 3% 2% 18% 3% 16%September 9% ‐2% ‐6% 0% ‐2% ‐2% 3% ‐6% 19%October 3% ‐4% ‐5% 3% ‐2% ‐2% ‐6% 6% ‐3%November 1% ‐2% ‐7% 4% ‐6% ‐6% ‐24% 28% ‐18%December ‐6% ‐4% ‐1% 3% 2% 2% ‐16% 62% ‐16%

(Sept‐ Dec) Average: -1% -4% -5% 3% -2% -2% -16% 32% -13%


Pilot Budget and Payback The payback calculations revealed a simple payback of 1.7 years. The payback would have been much lower with more coordination in the building that did not have the opportunity to take advantage of the pilot.



Additional Benefits Important projects were identified during the pilot as inefficiencies were noticed and discussed in a group setting. For example, by looking at the watt/day/square foot, it was discovered that

• Pine Hall: The kWh/day wH/day/square foot for Pine Hall are significantly higher than similar numbers for similar buildings (Polya hall, for example). Upon closer look, it appeared that the cooling system in Pine Hall is leftover from when Pine Hall was the campus’ datacenter. If the cooling system in the building can be right‐sized, and the performance of the building brought in line with it’s peers, this could save IT Services as much as $50,000/year in electricity costs. IT Services has kicked off a project to examine this, and is hoping to start realizing savings in fiscal year 2011.

• Redwood Hall is primarily an office building, but the energy intensity is higher than we would have expected. This will be further researched after the Pine Hall project is underway. If this pilot program had not occurred, we would never have looked at the energy usage and/or energy intensity of each building itself.



o Unmeasured costs – Total FTE hours spent on these pilots. Thus far it has been considered a volunteer effort. For larger implementations, FTE resources should be considered.

o Unmeasured benefits – Employee satisfaction, productivity and environmental comfort.

Lessons Learned • More planning and lead time requires for a department level pilot/rollout:

Planning and coordination at a department level is quite resource intensive. A multi‐building rollout requires more consistent, yet in many cases tailored, investigation and communication. For best results, it is useful to isolate clusters of ‘like’ buildings within a department, and roll out by cluster.

• Leadership and commitment are key: The commitment of the Green Team Member from each building had one of the biggest impacts on how much savings were received. Where the coordinator was committed and had the time to make sure installations


occurred correctly, put in work‐orders for automatic lighting control, and so on, we clearly had the best results.

o Acacia and Laurel, with 16% and 13% savings respectively, are small buildings that had committed and focused Green Team members. They were proactive in their buildings to ensure SmartStrips were installed correctly, motion‐detector lighting was installed, timers were put on copiers and other office equipment, and computers were put to sleep at night.

o Puichon, at 5%, was an impressive reduction since the Cable Network infrastructure is in that building making it an Energy Intensive building (wH/day/square foot in Puichon is approximately 4x what it is in Acacia and Laurel). As with Acacia and Laurel, the Green Team members in Puichon were passionate and committed to the effort, so proactively made changes and verified installations were completed correctly. This Green Team Member dedication is, we believe, one of the main reasons these 3 buildings had such successful results.

• Timing Matters: The timing of this pilot was not ideal. Many of the Green Team members were department admins, and the admin staff is generally extremely busy in July and August with end‐of‐year projects. The pilot had to be once delayed from May to August at the request of the CRC, but even then Green Team didn’t realize the demand for coordination time on the admin staff. As a result, most of the Green Team work happened from late‐August and well into September. In addition, the IT infrastructure load fluctuated among building due to staff and server relocations. On the whole the energy intensity reduced, but the relocation impacted staff planning and coordination around the pilot.

• Baseline estimates for departments are more complex: When a department is located

across multiple buildings, some buildings have a high baseload (kwh/square foot), and some have a low one, depending on what is going on in the building. Office spaces uses significantly less energy than server rooms and labs. Consequently, each building has to be looked at individually when creating an energy reduction target for the department.

• Innovation opportunities: Great opportunities can also be found by looking at the structure and use of buildings. For example, inefficient server rooms, always‐on office equipment, abandoned but still running cooling systems and other such opportunities can be found by looking closely at energy usage reports for buildings, and comparing them to what you would expect to see in similar buildings. The server room in Pine Hall and the Energy usage of Redwood Hall will become projects in themselves that will yield energy savings outside of this more desktop‐focused pilot.


Section 4: School of Earth Sciences—Mitchell/Braun Pilot Case Study Purpose of Pilot After successful building‐level pilots within administrative units, the Office of Sustainability engaged with the School of Earth Sciences to launch the first school‐level pilot. The goals of the pilot were to

• Learn about institutionalizing sustainability at a school‐level and to better understand how school administration and management can shape program implementation.

• Document the different paths of communication required to actively engage a diverse occupant profile (faculty, staff, and student) in building‐wide sustainability initiatives was another aim of the school‐level pilot, and one achieved through the development of a formalized project schedule.

• Introduce student sustainability coordinators into the overall program. These students, trained via the CEE/ES 109 course, provided assistance with audits, inventories, and ultimately implementation of the various conservation measures identified by the Green Team.

The School of Earth Sciences presented itself as the natural “first choice” for such a pilot due to its small size, the familiarity of its members with sustainability topics, and its match with basic selection criteria of building types and institutional readiness. The school occupies four buildings on the Stanford campus: Green Earth Sciences, Mitchell, Braun, and Y2E2 (partial).

Exclusions: The Green Earth Sciences building was excluded from consideration during the pilot due to its function as a wet lab and its status as a current participant in Phase 1 studies for Stanford’s Whole Building Retrofit Program. Since the School of Earth Sciences only partially occupies Y2E2, Stanford’s landmark high‐performance building, it was also excluded.

Process & Results The following sections outline the process for the Mitchell and Braun buildings during the School of Earth Sciences pilot, following the BLSP best practices. Variations from the typical sequence of activities are clearly noted. Many such instances are discussed at length in the “Lessons Learned” section at the conclusion of this case study.


Step #1 (Commitment and Team)

• The pilot was initially coordinated between the school’s Dean and the Office of Sustainability—after all parties agreed to participate, the day‐to‐day pilot operations were handled by Building Managers (NOTE: sustainability was not an official part of either building manager’s job description at the time of the pilot)

• Occupants of Mitchell and Braun are spread across four academic departments and include the following:

o Faculty o Staff (including the Dean’s Office and Branner Library) o Students

• Space types and functions found in Mitchell and Braun include the following: o Private and semi‐private offices (faculty, staff, and students) o Classrooms o Computer clusters/labs for student use o Dry research laboratories o Research computing clusters1 o Conference rooms o Student lounge areas o Kitchenettes o School of Earth Sciences’ Library

The initial Green Team included representatives from the Office of Sustainability, the Building Managers, local IT representatives, and two student sustainability coordinators. Eventually the team evolved to include staff from the Branner Library and the relevant Department Managers. No faculty or students occupants of either building joined the team. Note that the formalization of the Green Team occurred much later in the project timeline than other pilot projects, which contributed to the extended duration of the overall effort in both Mitchell and Braun. This is further explained as a ‘lessons learned’ later in this report.

1 The Center for Computational Earth & Environmental Science (CEES) cluster was identified partially through the pilot as a major consumer of electricity and represents the major challenge to clearly quantifying the pilot results.


Step #2 (Assessment, Audit, & Targets)

Occupant Survey In May 2010, occupants of Mitchell and Braun were sent the individual survey included in Toolkit 0—the response rate was more than 50% so the results deemed representative of the population in question. The results were carefully studied and merged with initial audit results to formulate the Green Action Menu. The last survey question is worth particular discussion, as it specifically suggests institutional readiness for various measures.

BRAUN CORNER


Studying the graphs shows that Braun and Mitchell occupants were most ready to turn off monitors each night, but had a high level of confusion regarding the system‐wide backup procedures (unwilling to turn off computers at night because misinformation still circulating about the timing of that operation). Other insights from this graph directly impacted “ease of implementation” rankings on the Green Action Menu and the action‐specific goals.

Initial Audits In parallel to the occupant survey, two student sustainability coordinators, interns with the Office of Sustainability, conducted audits of Mitchell and Braun. The students were trained via the CEE/ES 109 course and were selected for their ability to perform the necessary technical tasks and communicate effectively with the building occupants. Both students completed single‐topic audits for the course term project, and those reports served as a starting point for the larger, multi‐topic audits required with a full BLSP implementation. A waste audit was completed concurrently and coordinated by PSSI/Stanford Recycling Center. Student recommendations and waste audit results were presented to the Green Team and subsequently included in the Green Action Menu.

MITCHELL BUILDING


Reporting Reporting to the Green Team involved the use of templates to summarize audit and survey results, as well as provide initial recommendations. The example below shows one topic area (lighting). Other examples can be provided upon request.

Mitchell

05/18/10

LIGHTING

Building Level Sustainability Program (BLSP)

Audit Findings

Survey Results

Recommendations1. partially delamp areas identified as overlit during the audit

4. provide CFLs for personal task lighting (maybe have a trade‐in day?)

Relevant Calculationsn/a ‐‐ delamping is "free" (other than labor) and will add to existing ERP savings

‐‐ 31% of respondents use personal task lighting (incandescent bulbs)‐‐ 84% of respondents are comfortable with motion‐sensor controlled lighting in hallways (some safety concerns expressed)

2. install motion/IR sensors in hallways ‐‐ disengage during normal working hours if possible (8am ‐ 8pm will cover 90% of survey respondants)3. visit individual offices and consider partial delmaping with user input ‐‐ state "aggressive goal" but can always add back

Building NameDate

Topic Area

Overlit Areas: sub‐basement hallways, naturally lit basement offices B01 ‐ B09 and B51 ‐ B59, atrium @ 2nd floor library, 3rd floor hallways and atrium, and the 4th floor atrium.

‐‐ 65% of respondents say hallways are either sometimes or always overlit

‐‐ specific suvery observations of overlit areas include: sub‐basement and basement hallways, 4th floor hallways, and stairways


Green Action Menu After considering the audit and survey findings and initial recommendations, the Green Team met to formalize the Green Action Menu for Mitchell and Braun, the final version of which is shown below. An “ease of implementation” column was added to help determine the timing for each measure and to guide the Green Team’s prioritization of relevant actions.


Project Schedule The initial project schedule called for a launch in early June 2010, but due to the summer holiday and the readiness of IT services with BigFix modifications, the official launch occurred in mid‐September. Below is the project schedule snapshot from mid‐September, and it is obvious which targeted items from the Green Action Menu were most affected by these school‐specific factors:


Step #3 (Publicize & Launch) Publicity occurred in the following ways in Mitchell and Braun:

• Word of mouth from Green Team

• Flyers posted by student interns

• Office visits (in June and October)

• Occupant survey

The official program launch occurred in two phases via emails from the Dean. The initial email, sent in May 2010, announced the program and highlighted the results of the building audits and occupant survey. It presented some prioritized action items from the Green Action Menu, and discussed the timing of changes in desktop power management through the course of the summer. The second email, sent in October 2010, served to reengage the occupants in the program following the summer period, when the majority of faculty and students were absent due to field research elsewhere in the world. This email reported more formal data regarding the office audits and outlined the plan for student interns to implement the final conservation measures to conclude the BLSP implementation phase. The full text of each email is available in Toolkit 6 for reference.

Per the established BLSP best practices, it is ideal for the launch to coordinate with an “all hands” event. In the School of Earth Sciences pilot, due to the summer break, multiple departments and the diverse occupant groups, such an event never materialized. In future school‐level implementations, a greater emphasis will be placed on incorporating the program launch into an existing meeting forum within the organization.

Step #4 (Conduct Pilot) Pilot implementation had its most visible presence through the student‐led office visits, a new feature of BLSP offered for the first time in Mitchell and Braun. Trained student interns, graduates of the CEE/ES 109 course, followed‐up on the building audits by identifying specific populations and locations for the measures identified in the Green Action Menu. The students used existing building plans to set up a matrix where the following could be cataloged for each room:

• Overhead delamping requests

• Task lights with incandescent bulbs

• Occupants with enough peripherals to warrant a Smart Strip

• Printers (both personal and communal) without timers


• Compost, recycling, and trash bins without proper signage

This data provided the basis for Building Managers to place equipment orders, and identified quickly the areas of the building with the most opportunities for improvement. After the CFLs, Smart Strips, and timers arrived, the same students repeated their building walks to deliver the equipment to the appropriate occupants. In the case of Smart Strips, the students not only installed the strips, but trained each user on the particulars of the technology. The students installed timers on each appropriate printer and worked with the user groups to customize the settings. Override instructions were provided and posted next to each affected machine.

The addition of student office visits to the suite of BLSP offerings proved valuable. Occupants enjoyed interacting with student interns, and the verification provided by the students that particular devices had been installed and were functioning as intended gave the Green Team an extra layer of assurance that program implementation proceeded at the scheduled pace. The involvement of students also alleviated some of the resource constraints and time demands that were barriers for the Green Team during the implementation phase.

Step #5 (Assess & Recognize)

Mitchell Building There are two electrical meters in Mitchell, E1040 which represents primarily 220/108V plug loads and E1046 which captures 408/277V loads from HVAC and lighting. The results shown below outline the consumption in Mitchell during the pilot period—while plug load have dropped slightly, an average of 3% per month compared to the same months in 2009, the HVAC and Lighting load has increased dramatically, on the order of 20% compared to 2009 data. Although the exact components contributing to the increase in the E1046 load have not been fully vetted, it is safe to assume that a large percentage of that increase is due to the increased load from the CEES cluster. The small but consistent dip in the E1040 meter readings is likely the result of the Big Fix power management activation (finalized in July 2010) and the installation of timers and Smart Strips (finalized in October 2010). Although 50% of all lights were delamped in common areas and a number of private and semi‐private offices, the effect of that reduced consumption has been clearly overshadowed by the other HVAC loads, primarily those from the CEES cluster.


In an effort to better quantify the load required by the CEES cluster, a temporary meter was installed on theL4A panel, which feeds that space exclusively. During the observation period, from November 17th through December 1st, the CEES cluster averaged 1400 kWh/day. This enormous load represents more than 25% of Mitchell’s total electricity consumption. With this large load, it is clear that conservation achieved through behavioral change and the small‐scale equipment installation is difficult to observe.

Throughout the past two years, the electricity consumption in Mitchell has continued to rise, suggesting a new baseline for utility consumption as a result of shifts in research type. The development of the CEES cluster, as well as other changes in research equipment in the basement and subbasement laboratories, has contributed to this increase. More specifically, the CEES Carnegie cluster ramped up throughout 2009 and CEES tripled its capacity during winter closure 2009. Some portion of those changes can be observed in the chart below, which shows the average daily electricity consumption in Mitchell since January 2007.

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Mitchell Electrical Consumption 2009 vs. 2010

2009Plug LoadsE10402010Plug LoadsE10402009HVAC & LightingE10462010HVAC & LightingE1046


The table below further underscores the impact of the CEES cluster on the overall project performance, since the marginal improvements observed on the E1040 meter data are insignificant compared to the combined total of E1046 and E1040 data. The kWh/day average in a month‐to‐month comparison proves that the pilot, although somewhat impactful on a small scale, did not offer immediate observable savings at a building‐wide level.

2009 Plug

Loads E1040

2010 Plug

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% Change

E1040

2009 HVAC & Lighting

E1046

2010 HVAC & Lighting

E1046

% Change

E1046 Total 2009

Total 2010

% Change

Total June 3,661 3,643 -0.50% 1,836 2,026 10% 5,498 5,670 3.13% July 3,681 3,587 -2.55% 1,824 1,927 6% 5,505 5,514 0.16% August 3,611 3,545 -1.83% 1,765 1,996 13% 5,377 5,542 3.07% September 3,578 3,570 -0.21% 1,708 1,954 14% 5,285 5,524 4.52% October 3,698 3,654 -1.20% 1,824 2,099 15% 5,523 5,753 4.17% November 3,677 3,549 -3.48% 1,767 2,202 25% 5,444 5,751 5.64% December 3,633 3,423 -5.78% 1,756 1,980 13% 5,389 5,402 0.26%

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Jan‐07 Aug‐07 Feb‐08 Sep‐08Mar‐09Oct‐09May‐10Nov‐10

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Electricity Consumption

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After Pilot TOTAL

PLUG LOADS

HVAC/LIGHTING

avg. daily prior to BLSP = 4803 kWh/day avg. daily after BLSP = 5594 kWh/dayno sustained savings

Winter Closure


Braun Building In Braun, despite construction activity during the summer months, the electricity consumption did show consistent reduction compared to 2009 data. These sustained savings generated from decreases in the kWh/day average are summarized in the table and chart included below, and average about 3% per month. It has been suggested that the two months which showed a slight increase from the 2009 consumption were those where construction activity was at its peak.

2009 Reading E1453

2010 Reading E1453

% Daily Average Change

June 808 791 -2.0% July 722 741 2.7% August 769 701 -8.8% September 744 707 -5.0% October 799 806 0.9% November 787 777 -1.4% December 747 701 -6.0%

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Braun Corner -- Avg. Daily Electricity Consumption

Before Pilot

avg. daily prior to BLSP = 764 kWh/day avg. daily after BLSP = 746 kWh/daysustained savings =

6557 kWh/year = $721/year

Winter Closure


Budget & Payback Period Due to the variability in consumption resulting from the CEES cluster and the various construction projects, a return on investment calculation requires some further manipulation. Within Mitchell, since the total consumption continues to increase, an ROI calculation does not yield a useful answer. Taking the total equipment expenditures, however, and applying one quarter of those costs to the Braun project, facilitates a reasonable payback of just over seven months. The purchases and simple payback calculations are shown below:

This very reasonable payback period underscores the business case for the value of small investments towards electricity conservation and the measurable impact of behavioral change programs.

Lessons Learned and Best Practices The following are the key lessons learned from this pilot which further shaped the Building Level Sustainability Program in significant ways. We invite you pay close attention to this discussion, as these lessons hold true for many new and cross‐functional initiatives launched on campus.

We continue to be grateful to the School of Earth Sciences and its administration for enable us to have these experiences and study them closely to better understand how to turn institutional barriers to institutional readiness.

• Miscommunication comes from a mismatch of expectations. It is crucial to set expectations, deliverables and tasks upfront, even if it is a behavioral project and everyone enters an agreement with the best of intentions. High‐level buy‐in does not translate to implementation until and unless an agreed upon schedule and corresponding list of deliverables is established. Initial meetings with the responsible parties should not only include the “nominated” project manager by the project sponsor, the coordination should include a project schedule to facilitate deliverables

Units Purchased

Cost Per Unit Total Cost

Costs Allocated to

Braun

Smart Strips 48 36$ 1,718$ 429$

Timers 36 12$ 432$ 108$

2,150$ 537$

Average kWh/day Savings

Average Annual Savings

Calculated ROI

(months)

22 883.30$ 7.4


and accountability from the project’s inception. Knowing a successful project requires a minimum of six months to implement is critical to school‐level organization, and the communication of this timeline via a project schedule increases visibility. A formal project plan, regularly updated during Green Team meetings, helps keep the project on track. This way, clear deviations from the schedule can be flagged early and necessary intervention made to keep the project running smoothly. The School of Earth Sciences pilot led to generation of an “ideal” project schedule which can be fully customized, but serves as a good reference point for all projects. See Toolkit 5A for more information.

• Form a robust Green Team with support from all relevant parties early. Assuming that the Green Team will form itself with the “right” people is unwise. In addition to Building Managers, school‐level success depends on the involvement of Associate Deans and building management staff. Without support from this group, Building Managers cannot dedicate enough time to ensure program success. Significant staff time and resources are required to successfully determine, implement, and follow through with the targeted actions of a BLSP project. Also, due to the resources required, a project cannot successfully launch without a Green Team in place. Without this major body of communication and action, only marginal progress can be made. Furthermore, if the Green Team does not meet regularly, it is nearly impossible to get accurate status updates and hold team members accountable for deliverables. Relying on a volunteer Green Team where sustainability activities fall outside job descriptions is not a universally successful model.

• Timing is everything. In the academic departments, especially those with field‐based research, the summer translates to a three month “dead zone” where many occupants are away, and it is difficult to convene meetings with adequate representation. Several aspects of the School of Earth Sciences pilot were dependant on interaction with building occupants in a face‐to‐face setting, such as the office visits and the ultimate distribution of Smart Strips and timers. More significantly, the conversion of school‐owned machines to specific Big Fix power management settings required user input, and gathering this information during the summer proved more time‐consuming than anticipated. Thus, program implementation stretched from June through October. Utility consumption data generated throughout the implementation period should be viewed as only partial performance in light of the incomplete status of some conservation measures during that time.


• Formalize the official launch. Per the established BLSP best practices, it is ideal for the launch to coordinate with an “all hands” event. In the School of Earth Sciences pilot, due to the summer break, multiple departments and the diverse occupant groups, such an event never materialized. In future school‐level implementations, a greater emphasis will be placed on incorporating the program launch into an existing meeting forum within the organization.

• Local IT help is critical for deployment of Computer Power Management. Power management is very challenging to deploy quickly in an academic environment. The School of Earth Sciences representatives actually provided critical information to the Office of Sustainability regarding power management at the school‐level and created invaluable electronic resources (http://pangea.stanford.edu/computing/resources/powermgt/) that can be customized and modified for use by other schools.

• Schedule individual office visits to garner support and promote visibility. First formalized during the School of Earth Sciences pilot, individual office audits and return visits to guide installation are now an integral part of program success. See Toolkit 1F for more information. Student interns have proven to be a successful resource in executing these office visits and the associated individual user training.

• Document ongoing building construction and note for overlapping priorities. During the course of the pilot, several potential instabilities in resource consumption were brought the attention of the Green Team. Both buildings underwent semi‐significant construction projects during the course of the project, and the specific impacts of those activities on utility consumption were unable to be quantified. A second complication to the pilot in Mitchell concerns changes in research type that occurred over the past year, specifically the ever‐expanding server rooms dedicated to the Center for Computational Earth & Environmental Science (CEES). The specific challenge presented by the CEES cluster is discussed further in the subsequent sections of this report. In combination, the impacts of building construction and research computing loads altered the lens through which results must be interpreted. The team learned a significant coordination lesson, as it is critical to the success of each project that these types of activities are identified at the program’s outset. Should the consumption of each disruptive activity be impossible to isolate, it might be best to wait until stable conditions return before proceeding with program implementation.


• Identify and document extreme consumers. During the initial building selection and analysis, extreme users of electricity/water should be flagged and it should be determined whether or not consumption can be isolated from the building‐level consumption. As observed with the CEES cluster, the impact of behavioral change is difficult to document accurately and/or observe when a small change in the activities of a large energy consumer has a significant impact on the total building consumption.

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