Two high-impact building renovation projects employing an innovative financing structure that ties construction funding to future energy savings are now finished.
Based upon early indications of success for the $32 million renovation projects, planners at Facilities and Services already are studying the efficacy of expanding the program to 18 more campus buildings.
"We're still in the preliminary stages of studying the multiple systems, and it could be a rather large endeavor," said Josh Whitson, an F&S engineer specialist. "Ideally, we could do it faster by grouping it into one process."
The veterinary medicine project, completed in May, cost $22 million and is expected to recapture costs within 18 years. Some $18 million of the project was financed, with $2 million in funding coming from an approved student-fee contribution, $750,000 from F&S utilities and energy services and $250,000 from Vet Med.
The work included a long list of repairs, including ventilation and lighting systems upgrades, weatherizing work and laboratory fume hood exhaust system replacement. The work also reduced nearly $25 million from the backlog of deferred maintenance projects.
The recently completed Oak Street chiller project, which included the installation of two large-tonnage high efficiency electric chillers to reduce the usage of the steam-powered chillers, cost $10.7 million.
Whitson said preliminary discussions about the 18 buildings in question for the next project have shown a varying scope of work - with a few buildings needing work at the scale of Vet Med and others needing less comprehensive energy-efficient upgrades such as ventilation, system controls and fume hood exhaust replacement.
The funding mechanism used for the Vet Med and Oak Street chiller projects, called energy performance contracting, is nearly as important as the energy-saving upgrades.
"This is just another tool for us to use to get the work done that needs to be done," Whitson said.
Under the program, the university chooses from a list of pre-qualified energy service companies (ESCO), sometimes more than one, and then finances much of the project based on projected energy savings derived from the upgrades. In the case of the Vet Med project, energy consumption is expected to be reduced by nearly 40 percent.
If the work doesn't meet the energy-savings thresholds, the ESCO is responsible for making applicable repairs or making up the difference financially.
"It holds who we contract with accountable," Whitson said. "It turns the project into a partnership where they have a vested interest in finding ways to improve efficiency and save money."
The university has been successful in securing energy conservation grants. The Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity funded $3 million for energy performance contracting and retrocommissioning projects in fiscal year 2013. Since 2005, the university has received about $12 million in grant funding from the IDCEO and the Illinois Clean Energy Community Foundation for campus projects.
Steve Breitwieser, the acting manager of external relations for F&S, said the energy-conservation initiatives have helped put the university ahead of the Illinois Climate Action Plan's energy conservation goals while reducing consumption faster than peer institutions.
In addition to using ESCOs, F&S continues to upgrade metering systems to better monitor energy data.
"We're a national leader in this and other universities have been looking to us to see how well the ESCO idea works," he said. "It's part of an overall strategy and we've proved it can be very effective."