Noticed a different color in the buildings around campus lately? Does the lighting feel different to you? According to the Environmental Protection Agency, Yale now has Green Lights.
Yes, the same EPA that negotiated fines and "environmental enhancement projects" with the University for chemical waste violations earlier, this week has added Yale to its kudos list for progressive energy conservation measures.
The Green Lights program rewards businesses and institutions which are engaged in large-scale lighting retrofits. This basically entails the switch from incandescent to lower-energy fluorescent bulbs. Retrofitting may not sound sexy as environmental causes go, but such an undertaking has an immense impact upon overall energy conservation for Yale.
Simply by replacing lighting fixtures throughout the University, Yale could face a yearly savings of six million kilowatt-hours. Translated into dollars, that means up to $500,000 less spent on energy bills. In all, the whole retrofitting process pays for itself between two-and-a-half and four-and-a-half years.
You can thank engineering progress for these resource savings of both the natural and monetary variety. The most common retrofit at Yale involves replacing a 96-watt bulb with a 62-watt bulb. Some energy-eater 192-watt bulbs in Kline Biology Tower have been superseded by 40-watt bulbs. Every exit sign scattered around the campus has a 40-watt bulb that will soon be replaced by a puny one- or two-watt bulb.
With many of Yale's labs engineered in the days when energy was dirt-cheap, retrofits up on Science Hill have produced especially pretty numbers. The standout thus far has been Kline Geology Lab, which decreased its overall electrical load charge by almost 29 percent after its spring 1994 retrofit. It went from 2.4 to 1.8 million kilowatt-hours per year with no lights flickering or humming and improved color quality.
So if lighting retrofits are an ideal environmental solution to energy concerns, why wasn't it done yesterday? There are over 10 million square feet of answers to that question. Paul Francis, senior energy conservation engineer at Physical Plant, has been working full-time on lighting retrofits for over two years. He faces the ambitious goal of retrofitting 2.5 million square feet this year alone (approximately one-sixth of Yale's total area) and is the first one to point out how quickly the University is moving. In a similar retrofit project at Columbia University, four engineers are taking on 1.5 million square feet this year. Yale has two people doing all the audits and engineering analysis for almost twice the number of retrofits.
By the time Yale is fully retrofitted (probably within the next five years), chances are good that lighting technology will have progressed far enough that it will make economic sense to begin a retrofit process all over again.
But while Francis and his crew replace the University's lighting and save energy one bulb at a time, Yale's energy sources themselves are in the process of changing. In the past, Yale has bought its electricity from New Haven's own United Illuminating Company (UI) while producing steam for heating and cooling at the separate Pierson-Sage, Sterling, and Central Power Plants. The current below-ground construction work on Ashmun Street indicates the potential future of energy consumption at Yale. With the University's long-awaited multi-million dollar Interconnect project underway, Yale moves one step closer to cogeneration.
Cogeneration is a system whereby an institution of high power consumption can generate two utilities - electricity and steam - from a single fuel input. To achieve cogeneration, Yale would install gas turbines at the renovated Central Power Plant which would turn generators to produce heat. Large amounts of waste heat from this process would be captured as steam and used for heating and water chillers. Two energy outputs from one input means less use of environmentally controversial energy sources like coal, oil, and nuclear power - UI's top three sources - and more money in the University's coffers. The shift to cogeneration makes even more sense considering UI's relatively high energy prices and Yale's year-round steam consumption needs.
Yale has considered moving toward some form of cogeneration for over 20 years. Recent negotiations with UI, which cherishes Yale as its largest customer, have been long and complicated. Signs from the University and Physical Plant indicate that cogeneration will, indeed, go forward, perhaps with an announcement within the month. Yale has repeatedly assured UI that it will still turn to the utility for some of its electricity needs, yet the question remains as to how much electricity and steam the University plans to cogenerate.
From lighting retrofits now to the promise of cogeneration in the future, Yale should be commended for the formation of a progressive energy policy - something it has lacked in the past. Now we just need to remember to turn those green lights off when we leave the room.
Josh Sevin is a senior in Silliman.
Copyright 1995, The Yale Herald, Inc. All rights reserved.
This article may be freely distributed electronically, provided it is distributed in its entirety and includes this notice, but may not be reprinted without the express written permission of The Yale Herald, Inc. Write to herald@yale.edu for additional details.