Summer 2012 IARU is being offered!

The most amazing fellowship is being offered again! Apply today! It is an amazing abroad experience that you'll never forget.

*Summer 2012 International Alliance of Research Universities (IARU) Student Sustainability Fellowship and Exchange*

The 2012 IARU Student Sustainability Fellowship provides one UC Berkeley undergraduate student with the opportunity to work on a campus sustainability project at one of the International Alliance of Research Universities (IARU) member institutions. Projects will be institution-specific, but designed with the intention that lessons learned that can be applied at both the home and the host institution. The student exchange takes place for a six to eight week period between May and August 2012. The exact dates depend on the assigned University. To apply to be a 2012 IARU Sustainability Fellow, please submit a resume, a short statement of interest and qualifications, including language skills, availability, and preferred Universities (no more than one page), and two references to Judy Chess (jchess@cp.berkeley.edu) by 5:00 pm, Monday February 6th. Questions can also be sent to that email address. Finalists will be invited to an interview the week of February 13th. The successful candidate will be notified by February 17th and the Fellow will be matched to host institutions by mid-March. For more information, see the attached document- https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Qf43iBGU3N41-nnJXs_E9naN-yJQMvBrv6bujgGNIfE/edit

Good luck!

-Joanna

Water Reduction at Kenmare House

Kenmare House (where the Environmental Office and other Estate Management units are housed) like almost every building at the University - has a water meter, making it easy and possible to track monthly consumption and cost. Kenmare is quite small and water costs are rather low, so water savings from water reduction efforts are small.

Nevertheless, the toilets appear to be quite old and flush violently for what is probably 30-40 seconds if not a minute. This leads me to believe they are probably using at least 13 liters (or roughly 2.86 gallons which actually doesn't sound as impressive as how long and loudly it flushes) per flush.

Estate Management has a program for employees to make suggestions for improvements, called "Staff Suggestion Scheme." The other day Martin showed me a suggestion made by the building's maintenance lead to eliminate plastic cups from the building (except for guests) by supplying everyone with a reusable water bottle like a Sigg. Anyhow, Martin suggested I write up something to reduce flush rates in the male and female restrooms and so as a very small and last mini-mini project, I've written a "staff suggestion." Perhaps, at a minimum, water hippos which are provided free from the local water agency will be put in to displace some of the water in the tank.

An additional conclusion is that it'd be great for UC Berkeley to have a water meter on each building and to be able to get data off the meters online, which is something that we are working toward after the Chancellor's Advisory Committee on Sustainability's water study and reduction recommendations report.

Water Sampling

Today Martin and I took water samples from several streams on University property. While Martin took samples which were sent off to a lab to check for nitrates, ammonia, organic matter, and phosphates, I recorded dissolved oxygen and temperature. It was quite fun!

Water samples are taken on a monthly basis, especially because of possible contamination from both agriculture and laboratory-related practices. High levels of ammonia are of particular importance as it is harmful to the many fish and plants.

It began to rain so we didn't go to all the sites, but even in the rain the grounds look beautiful.

Martin Whiteland, Environmental Officer.

The tools: recording devices, water sampling bottles, dissolved oxygen meter.

The next day, Martin tested one of the water samples collected close to the physics building for glycol, which is anti freeze. Several years ago there was a leak and some glycol got into the water system. Glycol isn't regularly toxic, but in water it readily breaks down and depletes the oxygen supply.

This is the glycol testing kit. Even the slightest trace of glycol (far left, or nearly clear with just a tinge of purple) is cause for concern and action.


Glycol free!!

Meetings and Goodbyes

Last week was Wei hong's last week here in Cambridge. He is on his way back to Singapore to make it in time for the beginning of term and today is my last day.


Due to this, we've been quite busy the past two weeks!

1. We met the director of Estate Management, Michael Bienias. This is the equivalent of meeting Facilities Services Vice Chancellor Ed Denton. Director Bienias asked us how we're enjoying Cambridge (which we said we were enjoying a lot!) as well as some detailed questions about what we've been working on. We thanked him for making this program possible and took a picture (below)!

Left to right: Wei hong Tan, Michael Bienias, Irene Seliverstov

2. We also presented our findings to a handful of senior managers and the three Santander students.


Wei hong presented on the large amount of data about campus buildings' electricity and gas consumption which he had combed through and analyzed. Cambridge has meters which feed directly into an online program which generates graphs and figures. A most interesting finding was that in laboratory-dominated buildings, the baseline load is high even in the middle of the night and weekends. During typical work hours, there is an increase in energy consumption, but it is not as significant as the constant energy consumption when the building is relatively not in use. Additionally, there is no significant difference in energy consumption between term months and off-term months. That is, in July, when one would expect there to be fewer building occupants, the energy usage remains high due to the year-round high level of research activity.


For the air travel study, I analyzed roughly 5000 flights taken by University staff and students in order to calculate actual (versus theoretical) air travel emissions in the Carbon Management Plan. By looking at flights recorded by the insurance office and travel agents, we estimate that we've captured 75% of all flights, which is quite good. The 'missing' 25% we assume is when people book flights on their own and don't take out insurance. Therefore, it appears that air travel emissions could be calculated using solely insurance information with an uplift factor to account for travel agent data and “unaccounted for” flights. To calculate emissions we decided to use the ClimateCare online calculator. A productive future goal, I believe, would be to consolidate emission factors across reporting entities as they vary quite a bit . By far, the majority of flights are between European countries, but the majority of CO2 emissions come from flights to America.

From left to right:

Emilia (Santander), Paul Hasley (Energy Manager), Wei hong, Martin Whiteland (Environmental officer), Thomas (Santander), Chloe (Santander) and Irene (me).

Reducing Waste at Meetings

There is one large meeting room at 74 Kenmare House where Estate Management is housed. The room is connected to a kitchnette with a sink, fridge, coffee maker(s), water dispenser, etc. What I really like is that there is a set of coffee cups with little saucers and spoons that are taken out for each meeting for coffee.

Of course, there is someone who is responsible to bring the cups out and wash them afterwards, and the person isn't necessarily an attendee of the meeting. It appears the responsiblity is included in the duties of one person. I witnessed the same procedure when we visited Oxford for meetings there, though in that case it was the receptionist who did this because the meeting rooms were right next to her desk. Kenmare House has a receptionist as well, but the meeting room is on the 2nd floor (or perhpas 3rd -- it's difficult to say with all the stair cases)

Though this post can seem mundane, this small detail eliminates the waste associated with throwing away paper/plastic cups, looks professional because the cups match, and promotes the idea of reusing items, even if there is composting established which could potentially divert cups from landfill were they compostable. There are still plastic cups made available for water, and it's certainly possible to replace those with small glass water glasses as well. In fact, there is a a form any staff member can fill out called a "staff recommendation" to improve the sustainability of any aspect in Estate Management, and the head custodian/handy-man wrote up a plan to eliminate plastic cups for everyone except for guests.

The Juxtaposition of Old and New

The other day, Martin took Wei hong and me on a tour of West Cambridge, where new University buildings are located. This is where the famous Cavendish Laboratory, for example, has been relocated to.

When new buildings are built or when exsiting buildings have large retrofits, it is required that the building provides 10% of its energy needs through a renewable source. At first, the University was thinking about installing one large renewable energy fixture - such as a small wind farm, for example - but then decided against it for various reasons. Instead, buildings put up solar panels on hardscape where cars park or have biomass boilers. Below are just a couple of pictures of West Cambridge.



In the city centre, Cambridge University looks like it did 800 years ago. This is the side of Cambridge you see as a tourist when you come visit.

But as soon as you move out to the fringes, you see a whole other side:

This is a picture of a swale, a feature which allows storm water to slowly seep into the ground rather than run off immediately. Features such as these help buildings gain BREEAM certification.


This is one of the newest buildings, to which the swale belongs to. It's so new that it is actually still quite emtpy (lights are still on at night though...) One of its purposes is to provide spaces for new research to interface with start up companies to market new technologies.

This sign is for the building below:

The "LEED" equivalent here is BREEAM, which stands for: The Environmental Assessment Method for Buildings Around the World. I tried finding a plaque but couldn't...

These funny looking roofs are to cover the hundreds of parked bikes! On the West Cambridge site there are actually quite a few of these type of covered biking parking spots, but this is the largest we saw.

Transportation

by Irene

I am currently working on calculating CO2 emissions from air travel conducted by students/staff 2009-2010. The most difficult aspect of the task is settling down on a CO2 kg/km emission factor. Even among the UK Universities using the Carbon Trust Management Plan there are varying factors, let alone the large difference between the factor(s) used in UK and those in America. It seems in America the factor is higher because our calculators are accounting for radiative forcing. But Universities here typically accounting for uplift (this takes into account that sometimes flights take an indirect path from Point A to Point B, and also circling and delays) as well as assigning different emissions for short haul versus long haul trips (taking into account that the most fuel is burned for take off and landing).

That settled, I am interested what the data will show. I think for the purposes of the University, at this point, the most important data is figuring out number of miles traveled (long haul and short haul) and then multiplying them by the appropriate GHG emissions factor. But I think in terms of creating an action plan, I think it would also be useful to see when the most trips are taken (which months) and which departments. This is certainly not to point fingers at anyone or any time. But can perhaps lead to opening up more tele-conferencing rooms in those particular months or conducting a finer analysis of the types of trips being taken.