Saving the world, one degree at a time
Sitting in a well-heated classroom today I thought about the $40 million that Wash. U. spends for gas consumption. A great degree of effort has been put into this community in order to use new sources of energy such as Olin Library’s solar panels. Whereas the whole Danforth Campus uses 24,000 kilowatts per hour, the solar panel generates merely one kilowatt per hour. It is more than apparent that the cost of building a solar panel for educational purposes is far greater than its actual benefit, especially when we now understand the extent of a solar panel’s capabilities. Instead of putting more money on novel features, it is time to focus on saving energy and money by using the current system; in other words, we should save money first and spend money on novel designs second. Environmental problems cannot be achieved by only throwing money at them. The most important thing is to change the habits of energy use.
During the summer I did a study to find out how much energy and money we can save by having different temperature set-points on thermostats. Using LabSci 300, Ross & Baruzzini (an engineering firm) estimated for me the effects of lowering the set-points in terms of conserving energy and money. The annual utility cost for LabSci 300 is $37,000 when the set-point is 74 degrees, $34,000 when it is 72 degrees and $30,000 when it is 70 degrees. Normally, the default set-point is 72 or 73 degrees, but it varies according to the professors and students. The energy usage at 74 degrees is 3.3 million kBTU, 2.9 million at 72 degrees and 2.6 million at 70 degrees. From this result, we could hypothesize a 70 degree temperature set-point will save us up to $7000 and .7 million kBTU annually just for LabSci 300 alone.
We should set the temperature set points in all buildings in Danforth Campus 70 degrees Fahrenheit. It was impossible for the facility department to make estimation about how much in total we can save by implementing this idea to the whole campus, but the example of LabSci 300 would convince everyone that lowering temperature set-points is an effective way to conserve energy. Doing so will be simple, practical and promising in changing the root of the habits of energy use. A similar campaign called “Warm Biz” has been carried out nationally in Japan as a way to reach their goal for the Kyoto Protocol, and has been proven effective after two years of implementation.
Some would argue why we have to sit in colder classrooms when we pay an already too expensive tuition-don’t we deserve the most comfortable studying environment? Yet, it is not simply about saving energy and money. This country is rich and water, heating and cooling is taken for granted by most. However, this availability is not the norm for most people in the world. By using so much energy than other countries, especially developing countries, we are forcing those who cannot even afford heating to share the burden of environmental destruction with us. Simple as it is, the thoughts behind it stride over many other important issues.
We would not need any great amount of finding to save energy because just wearing one more layer of clothes would do. We could ask the administrators to spend the money that we saved on something that is beneficial to the students. Decreasing the activity fees or having a better recycling system could be good examples. If successful, this idea could be applied even to the local communities. As Mother Teresa said, “We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.”
Yiye is a sophomore in Arts & Sciences. She can be reached via e-mail at [email protected]
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