Good behavior nets pizza, especially for administrators and building liaisons at six Grainger College of Engineering buildings.
So when this multi-year energy avoidance project, completed through Energy Performance Contracting (EPC) team at F&S, came to an end, already showing $2.9M in cost avoidance, a few folks celebrated, alongside Associate Vice Chancellor and Executive Director Ehab Kamarah, and Utilities & Energy Services Director Rob Roman.
Sylvia McIvor leads EPC efforts, joining F&S in the summer.
“Expertise and collaboration across campus were essential to modernizing facilities and revitalizing educational and research spaces for U of I students, faculty, and staff,” McIvor said.
The comprehensive energy conservation measures in this project reduced the university’s carbon footprint by 18,863 tons of CO2e.
What is Energy Performance Contracting (EPC)?
EPC is a project delivery method focusing primarily on energy/utility reduction. The EPC process is a multiple contract process where the university contracts with a qualified Energy Service Company (ESCO) to provide all of the services required to design and implement a comprehensive project at the customer facility, from the initial energy audit through long-term guarantee of project savings.
The university uses this process to manage complex facilities with high energy use, such as laboratories, making them energy efficient and addressing deferred maintenance issues along the way.
EPC provides campus customers with a comprehensive set of energy efficiency, renewable energy, and distributed generation measures and is accompanied by guarantees that the energy savings produced by the project will be sufficient to finance the total cost of the project.
This significant energy conservation collaboration across campus modernized building systems, increased occupant comfort, addressed deferred maintenance items, and significantly reduced energy usage in the following facilities:
Roger Adams Laboratory
- Direct Digital Controls System
- Variable Air Volume Conversion
- Select Air Handling Unit Replacement
- Select Window Replacement
- Seal Building Envelope
Chemical & Life Science Laboratory
- Direct Digital Controls System
- Variable Air Volume Conversion
- Seal Building Envelope
Arnold O. and Mabel M. Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
- Direct Digital Controls System
- Laboratory Exhaust Upgrades
- New Heat Recovery Chiller
- Variable Air Volume Conversion
- Atrium LED Lighting Retrofit
Natural Resources Studies Annex
- Direct Digital Controls System
- New Heat Recovery Chiller Plant (Shared with ISTC)
- Air Handling Unit Upgrades
Illinois Sustainable Technology Center
- Direct Digital Controls System
- New Heat Recovery Chiller Plant (Shared with NRSA)
Forbes Natural History Building
- Direct Digital Controls System
EPC Successes
The Urbana campus has now executed over $100M of Energy Performance Contracting projects starting with the Veterinary Medicine facilities in 2010 which resulted in an estimated cost avoidance of $1M annually. A contract for the Oak Street Chiller Plant helped campus avoid an additional $1.2M annually. A project at Abbott Power Plant improved efficiencies for the gas boilers which results in approximately $200K in annual savings. To date, 17 buildings have been impacted by the EPC delivery method resulting in guaranteed savings of approximately $6M annually.