The purpose of the greenhouse gas inventory is to better understand the source of emissions on campus and to initiate the process of reducing them. Our goal is to increase energy efficiency, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and utilize the process as an educational tool for the university community.
This is a campus-wide inventory that will span the years 1990-2005, following a framework established by Clean Air - Cool Planet. The data generated from this effort can be used to establish a baseline from which to measure progress as well as provide a foundation for setting and meeting targets. Through this inventory (which is linked to the Governor's Carbon Challenge) we hope to evaluate cost-effective GHG reduction opportunities.
Our electricity use, which remained steady from 1990-1998, increased 40% between 1998-2005. The graph above shows the percent change since 1990 of electricity use, gross square footage (the total area of campus buildings), total operating budget and the electricity use per student (kWh/student). Each student consumed ~26% more electricity in 2004 than the equivalent in 1991. Plotted on separate axes are student population values and the total heating and cooling degree days for the past 15 years. Degree day is a measure of the departure from 65°F on any given day (for example, if the mean daily temperature is 45°, it is considered a heating degree day of 20). Together, these plots illustrate that our energy use on campus is not a direct function of campus population, the number of buildings on campus, or local climate.
Both the operating budget and energy budget have been steadilyincreasing over the past 5 years. In fact, the energy budget has almostdoubled since 2000. The percentage of the operating budget that isspent on energy is also increasing by ~0.15% per year. If these trendscontinue, by 2010 we will be spending ~$11,000,000 on campus energy(which would be 3.7% of the projected operating budget).