But the Boston school also has big energy ambitions. As part of a $43 million campuswide renovation project already in progress, the school has launched a massive overhaul to its power infrastructure, including the construction of a massive solar power array and a conversion to geothermal climate controls.
The redesign will fall under a $20.1 million Energy Savings Performance Contract (ESPC). Upfront money is coming from a combination of grants and loans, but the project should eventually pay for itself, saving the school some 60 percent in energy costs each year.
The centerpiece of this sweeping renovation: a parking lot.
In fairness, this isn’t just any parking lot. The renovations are turning the 320-spot surface lot into the centerpiece of a smart campus energy scheme. Engineers are sinking 115 wells under the pavement to tap geothermal energy for heating and cooling 291,000 square feet of office, laboratory and classroom space on the five-building campus. A canopy of 3,000 solar panels will cover the parking lot, generating nearly a megawatt of power.
“From a construction cost perspective, the parking lot was the easiest way to go. It’s a big, wide open area,” Hepner said. It helps that the ground beneath the parking lot is mostly Roxbury puddingstone, a local soil that is especially amenable to thermal conductivity. “This is exactly what you want to see. It means we were able to put the wells closer together and reduce the number of wells.”
It helps, too, that the campus already has thermal heating in place, a system that uses a furnace, pumps and a water tower to heat and circulate water in order to regulate building temperature. Because the new geothermal system works on the same principles, engineers were able to reuse much of the existing infrastructure, simply swapping in the steady-state temperatures 500 feet underground in place of the furnace-heated water flow.
The transition to geothermal is in keeping with a push toward smarter campus energy planning at the national level. The U.S. Department of Energy Better Buildings Alliance, for instance, includes a higher education group made up of 29 colleges and universities representing more than 300 million square feet of space. Together they share best practices in an effort to pare back the $6 billion annual energy cost in the higher education sector.
The energy consultancy Ameresco has directed numerous higher-ed smart energy upgrades, including the Roxbury Community College project. Executive Vice President David Anderson said colleges and universities sometimes have an advantage when pursuing such projects, since faculty and students tend to be highly attuned to matters of sustainability.
“The academic side of the house, the professors and teachers, generally have some familiarity with these solutions and they view them very favorably,” he said. That can make the process go more smoothly when it comes time to tear up parking lots and rearrange ductwork.
In fact, student interest is high enough that projects like these are becoming a recruiting draw. “More and more we are finding that when students try to decide which school they want to attend, the level of climate change awareness and the initiatives that a university takes are becoming important in that consideration,” Anderson said.
Of course, such endeavors cost money. In the case of the Roxbury renovation, which falls under the direction of the state’s Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance (DCAMM), a number of factors came together to make it happen.
A $600,000 grant from the Department of Energy Resources (DOER) helped to pay for the solar component. Another $9.6 million came in the form of a loan from the state Clean Energy Investment Program, which will be paid back out of cost savings over time, which are expected to reach nearly $860,000 annually. The local utility added $1.2 million in energy credits.
In addition to the geothermal and solar enhancements, the upgrades come with a laundry list of almost two dozen energy-saving upgrades. The school plans to install new energy-efficient hot water heaters, new backup furnaces that will run on gas rather than electricity, new flow control devices on toilets and new LED lighting.
New technology will allow the school to remove 24 fresh-air vent fans from the main academic building and replacement them with just four units. A new climate management system will facilitate centralized energy management.
At the end of the day, the parking-lot reuse could send a signal to other urban campuses looking to modernize their energy profile.
“In a setting like this, land availability is very limited,” Anderson said. “In this case the college didn’t have to compromise anything. The parking lot is in better condition — it’s repaved and it has a new layout — and now it is generating energy from two new sources.”
