The massive UC system includes 10 campuses, five medical schools, and several acute care facilities; in all, more than 100 million gross square feet of space accommodating a rapidly growing student population of some 200,000. The system also is California's largest electricity user, consuming up to 1 percent of the state's total peak load.
According to Michael Bade, director of capital programs at UC San Francisco, the UC system has traditionally emphasized energy conservation and environmental stewardship. That tradition is reflected in the university's infrastructure: In the 1980s and early 1990s, the university performed numerous energy efficiency retrofits, and six of the campuses boast large thermal energy storage and cogeneration facilities.
Bade, who at the time was working in the UC Office of the President, had been pushing for more aggressive policies on energy efficiency and environmental sustainability for many months, but with little success. Finally, and largely in response to an active push by the student member of the UC Board of Regents, the Office of the President agreed to form a committee to develop such a policy. The committee, which began meeting in early 2003, included staff from the Office of the President (including Bade as staff green building coordinator), facilities and budgeting representatives of the various campuses, research professors and independent researchers from across the system, a board member from the California Energy Commission, and Aileen Adams, Agency Secretary of the California State Department of Consumer Affairs — one of the most powerful members of the Governor's cabinet — and some of her staff.
The new policy includes seven key points.
1. New building projects must outperform Title 24 by 20 percent.
In deciding how far new buildings should outperform the California Energy Code (Title 24), a key question the committee faced was whether the policy should track the code as it evolves: requirements for energy efficiency are tightened every few years based largely on technological developments. Some committee members wanted to base the new policy on the already familiar requirements for year 2001; others wanted a re-evaluation every time the code changed. Ultimately they agreed to require all projects to outperform Title 24 by at least 20 percent, but that this requirement would not be pegged to any particular version of the code.
2. New building projects must enroll in "Savings by Design."
The next element of the new policy is a requirement for all new projects to enroll in California’s "Savings by Design" program. Savings by Design is a publicly funded program, administered by California’s four investor-owned utilities, through which building owners can get assistance — either directly or paid to outside design consultants — to improve a project’s energy efficiency. In order to qualify for such assistance, a project must aim to beat the state code’s requirements for energy efficiency by 10 percent.
3. New building projects must achieve a minimum equivalence to LEED-certified rating.
The committee faced a key challenge in deciding whether to incorporate the LEED Green Building Rating System for sustainable building design. The LEED system (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Designs) is a voluntary, consensus-based national standard for developing high-performance, sustainable buildings. LEED was developed by members of the U.S. Green Building Council.
An important limitation of the LEED system for the UC policy process was that it was not originally developed to deal with the kinds of buildings typical of a university campus. As a result, the scoring system doesn’t always provide a rational set of choices for university buildings.
According to Bade, the certification documentation is quite costly. Still, the system enjoys fairly widespread acceptance, and has proven effective in many regards.
In the end, the UC team decided to require buildings (other than labs and acute care facilities) to satisfy the standards that would be required to receive a LEED 2.1 Certified rating, but without requiring formal certification itself. A system-wide survey of UC construction practice indicated that this is achievable. The new policy also asks campuses to strive to satisfy the more stringent requirements of a LEED Silver rating or higher, whenever possible within the constraints of program needs and standard budget parameters.
4. Labs must use Labs21 environmental performance criteria in addition to LEED.
Bade points out that in some ways lab buildings provide greater opportunity for efficiency improvement, due to the less stringent energy-use regulations that govern labs in California. Lab designers also tend to take a looser approach to energy budgets because of the unpredictability of future lab uses. At the same time, outside air requirements and safety considerations can complicate efforts to improve energy efficiency.
Like LEED, Labs21 is a voluntary program providing opportunities for technical assistance in improving energy efficiency. Labs21 is jointly sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. According to the Labs21 Web site, the goal of the program is "to encourage the development of sustainable, high-performance, and low-energy laboratories nationwide."
For the new UC policy, the committee decided to add the Labs21 criteria to the LEED criteria as a basis for measuring efficiency and sustainability in labs. The design process will pay special attention to energy efficiency for systems not addressed by Title 24. Systems that are regulated by Title 24 — lighting systems, for instance — must be designed to the same performance standards as for any other type of building.
The committee is also looking at other applicable guidelines for the university’s healthcare facilities, such as the "Green Guide for Healthcare."
5. System-wide growth-adjusted energy consumption must be reduced by 10 percent by 2014.
The committee especially felt the pinch of the Section 28 limitations in choosing targets for improved efficiency in existing buildings. The new policy aims to reduce growth-adjusted energy consumption by 10 percent or more, using year 2000 as the baseline, by 2014.
Several members wanted to aim for a substantially larger reduction of 25 percent. Bade believes that wouldn’t be a difficult target to achieve if not for the Section 28 waiver limitation, since the system includes many buildings built in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s, that haven’t been significantly modified since.
6. A strategic plan must be developed to provide ten megawatts of locally renewable power by 2014.
According to Bade, renewable power was the most difficult debate with which the committee grappled. There was broad interest in displacing a quarter of new energy requirements from campus growth if possible.
Many on the committee wanted to pursue this through an aggressive solar-energy program, but financing such a program would be difficult, and achieving break-even would require 18 years.
Ultimately, the committee agreed to a policy calling for production of ten megawatts of local renewable power by 2014 — enough to achieve the goal of displacing a quarter of the peak electric demand from new campus growth — and to develop a strategic plan to do so.
7. Procurement officers must aim for equivalence in green power purchasing to the state’s renewable portfolio standard.
Regarding green power purchasing, the debate focused mainly on options for buying green energy futures and credits on the Chicago Board of Options.
The decision was to strive to achieve equivalence in UC power to the California State Renewable Portfolio Standard, which sets a goal of procuring 20 percent of its electricity needs from renewable sources by 2017.
In order to respond to the new policy directive, each campus is currently developing a proposed baseline of the LEED-equivalent points that they will aim to achieve through the medium of design standards. Each campus is proposing a slightly different mix due to differing environmental constraints and planning considerations.
