 "Photo: Alexander Daniels")
As part of the Mānoa Green Days (MGD) initiative, participating buildings on campus completely closed or partially powered down for a period of the winter break.
This is the second year of the program, backed by Chancellor Virginia Hinshaw, which plans to reduce air conditioning and overall energy use during holidays and vacations.
“We’ve had several buildings on campus that have remained on, on holidays and breaks, when two people are using an office space,” said Eric Crispin, assistant vice chancellor of financial and physical management. “It just makes sense to shut down entire buildings.”
This year, 25 buildings participated in the program, 13 of which committed to complete shutdowns. This contributed to year-over-year savings of a million kilowatt-hours. At 22 cents a kilowatt-hour, that equates to $220,000 in savings.
“It’s a learning experience for ourselves as well as socializing the problem with the community at large,” said David Hafner, assistant vice chancellor for campus services. “MGD is a way for staff, faculty and students to participate in the energy-savings campaign.”
Hafner estimates that buildings that directly participated in Mānoa Green Days accounted for 20 percent of the year-over-year savings. The other savings come from ongoing mechanical upgrades.
A recent such project was updating the air-conditioning system in Moore Hall, which is predicted to amount to 20 to 30 percent in energy savings for the building.
Campus services uses funding provided by the state Legislature for campus renewal and deferred maintenance to work on projects such as changing air-conditioning plants in buildings, relocating computer servers and making changes to the campus water systems, according to Hafner.
Another ongoing project is replacing lamps, retrofitting lighting controls and reducing unnecessary lighting. They have installed lighting controls in Hamilton Library that turn off the lights in Phase 3 at midnight.
One of the challenges to energy conservation is the way buildings are engineered.
“When these buildings were built, they weren’t built like hotels where you can turn off (the power to) one of the rooms,” Hafner said. “You have to turn off floors or entire buildings. It’s really old technology. We’re learning how to cope with these new problems and we’re discovering how we use our space and how we need to adapt to it.”
In 2006 and 2007, the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa signed the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment to reach specific conservation goals. This includes achieving 30 percent energy reduction by 2012, 50 percent by 2015, and a transition to 20 percent of energy from renewable sources by 2020. By 2050, the goal is to be energy and water self-sufficient.
“From 2001 to date we’ve achieved 16 percent energy reduction, so we’re better than halfway (to the 2012 goal),” Crispin said. “Mānoa Green Days help to stay on track.”
In 2008, UH Mānoa signed the Climate Registry agreement and received a grant to undertake inventory of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and create an action plan. The school regularly monitors and publicly reports GHG emissions.
“I don’t know if we’ll ever come off the grid because of the need for emergency power beyond our storage capability, but I think we’ll get pretty close,” Hafner said. “We’re slowly improving and getting people to be more energy aware and pay more attention to what it really means to use energy.
“Every time we go through this exercise, people become a little more educated about the problem.”
