Date: 2008-04-28
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Over the past 16 years, Texas A&M has cut its total annual water consumption by 53 percent (from 3.5 billion gallons in 1991 to 1.6 billion gallons in 2007), all while serving a significant increase in customers and more than 25 percent additional building square footage. Texas A&M has also reduced its annual energy consumption by 20 percent over the past five years, saving the university approximately $50 million in energy costs and reducing carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere by 338 million pounds.
(Media-Newswire.com) - Even with the addition of thousands of students and hundreds of faculty and new teaching and research facilities to support them, Texas A&M University has managed drastic drops in water and energy consumption, making the nation’s sixth-largest university a campus conservation leader.
Over the past 16 years, Texas A&M has cut its total annual water consumption by 53 percent (from 3.5 billion gallons in 1991 to 1.6 billion gallons in 2007), all while serving a significant increase in customers and more than 25 percent additional building square footage. Texas A&M has also reduced its annual energy consumption by 20 percent over the past five years, saving the university approximately $50 million in energy costs and reducing carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere by 338 million pounds.
The university now has an enrollment of more than 46,000 and approximately 10,000 faculty and staff on its 5,200-acre campus.
Texas A&M Director for Utilities Jim Riley said these huge reductions were accomplished through the implementation of many operational changes and improvements in the university’s water and energy facilities. “Over the past decade, we have completely changed our way of thinking about water and energy efficiency,” Riley said. “Water and energy are precious resources, and even if they are available, we don’t want to use more than we have to.”
The most significant water and energy-saving improvements have been in the university’s utility plant operations. Texas A&M self-generates much of its own electricity in its four utility plants, which are also the single biggest consumer of water because they require water for building heating and cooling processes, Riley said. The university has invested $75 million since 2000 in utility system upgrades to increase capacity and improve both reliability and efficiency. Another addition planned for 2008 is a new performance optimization program – a dynamic real-time evaluation tool used to monitor the hundreds of inputs from electric meters, flow meters, temperature sensors, and other monitoring devices to optimize the efficiency of utility plant operations, Riley said.
Texas A&M has also reduced water use through the implementation in 1993 of a policy to install low-flow plumbing fixtures (toilets, showers and sinks) in all new building construction and renovation projects. For example, newer low-flow toilets have helped with water conservation by going from using 4.5 gallons per flush to 1.6 gallons per flush. Considering the thousands of toilets used on campus each day, it amounts to a significant reduction in water use, Riley said.
The university has also improved management of campus irrigation systems. The hundreds of fully-irrigated acres of campus have been automated and are much better controlled, Riley said. In 2002, Texas A&M also installed new non-potable (non-drinking) water wells and delivery systems to serve Brayton Fire Training School and the TAMU Golf Course. “By isolating those systems, we not only save money by not having to treat the water, but we can also manage the drinking water system more closely and reduce water consumption,” Riley said.
Another way the university has reduced water use is through improvements to minimize water leaks. “Texas A&M has hundreds of miles of underground water lines on campus, and leaks in any of those systems results in water loss,” Riley said. “With the new operational improvements, we do a much better job of preventing leaks, and when they do occur, we can isolate and repair them more promptly.”
Texas A&M is also constructing new buildings on campus to qualify for the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification. To qualify for certification, buildings must obtain a set number of points in the categories of sustainable sites, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, materials and resources, indoor environmental quality, and innovation in design process. Part of LEED certification also involves water re-use initiatives, and Texas A&M building architects and engineers are working to design systems to reuse roof-drained rainwater and condensation from cooling for irrigation.
In the future, Texas A&M officials also hope to reuse water from its wastewater treatment plant for the university’s non-potable water systems. “We’re pumping water from the ground and using it on campus as efficiently as possible. Then, much of the water goes to the sanitary sewer system and wastewater treatment plant,” Riley said. “But if we were to bring back the majority of that treated wastewater and put it into non-potable reuse, that would directly reduce the amount of water we have to pump out of the ground.”
Texas A&M’s Office of Energy Management posts an energy-saving tip in each day’s edition of Aggie Hotline, the university’s e-mail news brief service, and maintains a more extensive list of energy tips on its web site http://energy.tamu.edu, which also lists a phone number and email address for people to report any energy or water waste they see on campus.
To develop, coordinate, and enhance Texas A&M's sustainability efforts, Kelly Wellman was recently appointed as the university's first sustainability officer. In her new position, Wellman will work with university stakeholders to develop new sustainability initiatives and assess their cost effectiveness and technical feasibility. She will also work to further communicate the university's sustainability efforts with the Texas A&M community and keep the faculty, staff, and students informed of sustainability issues and initiatives. “Although my position is new, sustainability is not a new concept for Texas A&M,” Wellman said. “Texas A&M has numerous efforts and programs that have been in place for years that help make our institution sustainable, and my role is to enhance these efforts.”
The students of Texas A&M have also played a part in lowering the university’s energy consumption through the “Residence Hall Energy Challenge.” The challenge, sponsored by the Department of Residence Life and Physical Plant Utilities, involved a competition between campus residence halls to determine which hall could produce the largest utilities reductions. This year’s Residence Hall Energy Challenge winner, Clements Hall, achieved a reduction of 20.15 percent, followed by Leggett Hall’s reduction of 15.25 percent, and McInnis Hall’s reduction of 10.3 percent. One of the goals of the challenge was to raise awareness and promote greater campus involvement in conservation, organizers note, and also to encourage students to change their individual lifestyles and attitudes about the need for conservation.
In 2007, Texas A&M achieved recognition by the Association of Energy Engineers for its outstanding accomplishments in energy management. And in 2006, Texas A&M was recognized by the State of Texas Comptroller ’s Office as one of two universities in the state to achieve exceptional results in energy efficiency.
“We have some success stories to hang our hat on, but we can’t sit back and rest yet,” Riley said. “Our work is cut out for us, and we’re going to keep working on ways to reduce our water and energy use. This is especially important as the cost of energy continues to increase.”
Contact: Jim Riley at ( 979) 845-1210 or jimriley@tamu.edu; Kelly Wellman (979) 845-1911 or kwellman@tamu.edu
Writer: Amelia Williamson at (979) 845-4641 or aaw11@tamu.edu