"We are just finishing up putting in an energy building management system where everything is controlled centrally and we can turn off heat and air conditioning or change it, and right now it's up but it's not nearly as functional as it can be when it's finished," said Carolyn Elfland, the associate vice chancellor to whom energy and facility services report. "We also have to be able to change up the controls in the buildings to be able to talk to [the management system]."
The university also wants to be able to make sustainability hit home and have more of an impact with building occupants. Daniel Arneman, who is compiling UNC's comprehensive carbon inventory, said, "We're working on some systems to feed back that information to the building occupants. You can't change what you don't know what you're doing."
Arneman's research into every aspect of energy supply and demand for UNC stresses high data quality, but with that, "you need to be able to translate and break it down for the people living in that space and in a way that's meaningful to them."
Such a system opened up last year in Morrison Residence Hall, where students can track their own energy usage and the savings from the dorm's solar heating system for water.
UNC also wants more than a computer providing that feedback; the university wants to have a person in each department coordinating and serving that role, too.
"The idea is to have a sustainability coordinator in a department just the way right now every department has a human resources coordinator," Arneman said.
"Somebody has to have that awareness. It is a monumental effort. There's just so many unique items that departments use. We've got Energy Star policies on appliances and also on laboratory equipment, but to make sure people follow that, you essentially have to change the culture, and hopefully the way you start to do that is with a sustainability coordinator."
Tuesday: Part 3 looks at what UNC is planning for the future.
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