News Sustainable Biz Sustainability helping green higher ed’s bottom line
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By Nathan Peck | MiBiz
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WEST MICHIGAN — Recent gains in sustainability on college campuses are a function of greener buildings, sure, but they’re also the result of smaller efforts, such as using a reusable mug rather than disposable cups at the coffee shop.
LEED accredited buildings get attention, but the real work is in systematic holistic change on campuses, explained Harold Glasser, executive director for campus sustainability at Western Michigan University.
WMU took a novel approach to funding green investments, Glasser explained, in that early on, the university held that energy savings were vital to controlling costs. Western was the first school in the country to form a revolving fund for energy conservation in 1980. Funding for energy conservation and greenhouse gas reduction is directly built into a deferred maintenance fund and the infrastructure the university has built for utility billing, rather than setting up a green revolving fund as at other schools.
By focusing on overall operational cost reduction, rather than a per-project model, WMU has been able to make greater strides. Monies that were directed toward utility payments could then be directed toward energy savings efforts on campus. It broadened the pool of resources available for conservation efforts on campus, Glasser told MiBiz.
“With green revolving funds, returns and interest are reinvested. By directing some of the utility costs to conservation, we … said we don’t care whether we spend on actual utilities or on conservation improvements that reduce our utility usage. These conservation efforts mean a negative investment stream of dollars — dollars we don’t have to pay out over time (for utilities).”
To date, Western has financed 101 projects, with a portfolio ROI of 47 percent and a payback period of just over two years, according to analysis conducted by the Sustainable Endowments Institute in its 2010 report “Greening the Bottom Line.” The total project costs are approximately $5.85 million to date, and WMU’s annual cost savings are approximately $2.75 million, helping avoid approximately $16.71 million in costs to date.
At Grand Valley State University, Bart Bartels is also looking to a broad-based approach to sustainability. Bartels, as project manager for the university’s Sustainable Community Development Initiative, sees green building as a piece of a larger puzzle.
“Even though we added 800,000 square feet of floor space, our greenhouse gas emissions dropped 5 percent,” Bartels told MiBiz. “What do you attribute that to? How much of that is attributable to LEED, or just that new buildings are more efficient than old buildings? We have used a lot of behavior change initiatives, (and) we have facilities that are more efficient. To be honest, it is a little bit of everything.”
Facilities planners at GVSU have spent $1.5 million on isolated energy projects over the last few years, said James Moyer, assistant VP of facilities planning.
“Those projects have enabled Grand Valley to avoid approximately $1.1 million in energy costs on an annual basis,” Moyer explained. “Payback is immediate with a reduction in water use, electrical power and other utility use. The LEED buildings are using at least 15 percent fewer utilities than our newer, non-LEED buildings. This cannot be fully attributable to LEED as the newer buildings are naturally more energy efficient.”
Bartels is looking to the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education STAR report — as it compares GVSU’s 2010 energy usage against a 2005 baseline. Grand Valley is one of 36 colleges and universities to complete the AASHE STARS assessment of sustainability.
“The assessment points out areas of relative success as well as opportunities for improvement,” Bartels said. “The AASHE STARS report is going to be huge. … We expect that to show a 20-percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.”
Both Bartels and WMU’s Glasser are heartened by student and faculty interest in promoting sustainability on campus. At GVSU, 13 percent of student credit hours now incorporate sustainability into their curricula. That interest sometimes butts up against the structures of higher education to prevent collaboration across disciplines. When Glasser opened up a luncheon discussion about promoting sustainability across the curriculum to 40 faculty members last year, 56 showed up.
“This was the last day that grades were due and we had 56 faculty members show up — clearly this is something on our faculty’s minds,” Glasser said. It was a good opportunity to gauge what others across the campus are doing. “One of the problems with the system is we have silos. Unfortunately the world has problems, our communities have problems (that) benefit from individual expertise, but that also go beyond a single discipline. In the university system, we don’t have a way to know what other faculty members are doing.”
The issues associated with sustainability require the expertise of faculty and students across many backgrounds — yet the tenure process doesn’t necessarily reward faculty members for reaching across to collaborate with other disciplines. Life for faculty members is governed still by the “publish or perish” mantra — valuing research and publication in a particular discipline’s journals.
“This is a non-trivial issue, so we try to find the leverage points to do this change,” Glasser said. At its heart, WMU is fostering collaboration among the university, businesses, and community around these issues.
“What I think sets us apart from universities in the rest of Michigan and nationally, is there is a widespread agreement among students, faculty, administration and the community that sustainability — that is, improving quality of life for all — (is) a key objective.”
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