Strategic Communications and Marketing News Bureau

Campus ahead of energy-consumption goal

This year the UI continues this exceed its goal of energy-consumption savings, according to Terry Ruprecht, director of energy conservation.

As long as subfreezing temperatures don’t continue this winter, the university could save far more than officials initially had hoped.

“The numbers right now are very good, but in another week or so we’ll have the December data; that will give us a half-year,” Ruprecht said last week about the 2010 fiscal year.

In September, Inside Illinois reported that the UI saved $7.5 million at the Urbana campus in fiscal year 2009, which was $2.5 million more than projected.

Ruprecht now says consumption data shows the university is down 11.5 percent from the previous year for July through November 2009, the first five months of the current fiscal year.

“It’s pretty clear the cold weather in January will off-set (the lower consumption), but nevertheless we’re quite pleased about the July through November data,” he said.

The campus’s goal is to reduce consumption by 10 percent by June 30.

“We’re actually ahead of the game,” he said. “We were at 9 percent reduction by the end of ’09. We almost hit our three-year goal in two.”

Although many at the university would like to see the energy savings invested in new projects, the savings will probably go toward deficits in the campus budget, Ruprecht said.

“The good news is we have a way to pay down the deficit. The bad news is people would like to be able to do other things with those freed-up dollars.”

GO GREEN ILLINOIS

Inside Illinois will begin highlighting the UI’s sustainability efforts. Tell us what your department or unit is doing to conserve energy or preserve resources.

Send your ideas to herkamp@illinois.edu.

Read Next

Announcements Marcelo Garcia, professor of civil and environmental engineering at The Grainger College of Engineering.

Illinois faculty member elected to National Academy of Engineering

Champaign, Ill. — Marcelo Garcia, a professor of civil and environmental engineering in The Grainger College of Engineering, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

Social sciences Male and female student embracing on the quad with flowering redbud tree and the ACES library in the background. Photo by Michelle Hassel

Dating is not broken, but the trajectories of relationships have changed

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — According to some popular culture writers and online posts by discouraged singles lamenting their inability to find romantic partners, dating is “broken,” fractured by the social isolation created by technology, pandemic lockdowns and potential partners’ unrealistic expectations. Yet two studies of college students conducted a decade apart found that their ideas about […]

Engineering Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Nishant Garg, center, is joined by fellow researchers, from left: Yujia Min, Hossein Kabir, Nishant Garg, center, Chirayu Kothari and M. Farjad Iqbal, front right. In front are examples of clay samples dissolved at different concentrations in a NaOH solution. The team invented a new test that can predict the performance of cementitious materials in mere 5 minutes. This is in contrast to the standard ASTM tests, which take up to 28 days. This new advance enables real-time quality control at production plants of emerging, sustainable materials. Photo taken at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign on Monday, Feb. 3, 2025. (Photo by Fred Zwicky / University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)

Researchers develop a five-minute quality test for sustainable cement industry materials

A new test developed at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign can predict the performance of a new type of cementitious construction material in five minutes — a significant improvement over the current industry standard method, which takes seven or more days to complete. This development is poised to advance the use of next-generation resources called supplementary cementitious materials — or SCMs — by speeding up the quality-check process before leaving the production floor.

Strategic Communications and Marketing News Bureau

507 E. Green St
MC-426
Champaign, IL 61820

Email: stratcom@illinois.edu

Phone (217) 333-5010