Community College Journal - October/November 2011

Evans had heard about an Energy Performance Contracting model, which would allow the college to do a retrofit project without spending additional money. Under the contract, the college would pay for equipment and systems upgrades with utilities savings generated by the new facility. A standard Request for Qualifications process connected the campus with Johnson Controls, an energy services company that claims to have saved its clients more than $19 billion through energy efficiency projects since the mid-1980s.

In the first phase of a $12.8 million deal, the college upgraded boilers, managed computer usage more efficiently, and focused on water conservation. The college will offset the improvements with a projected $18 million in utility savings over a 20-year period.

In phase two, the college plans to upgrade lighting and climate controls for additional savings. “The Johnson guarantee says that if we don’t generate enough savings, they will make up the difference,” says Evans.

Jim Swan, account executive for higher education at Johnson Controls, says the company takes on these projects to help colleges improve their campus facilities and create a better learning and working environment. “Lee College is looking at a 47 percent reduction in electricity spending, 28 percent reduction in natural gas, and 37 percent in water,” he says.

Other colleges are also reaping the rewards of utilities savings.

Mt. San Antonio College (Mt. SAC) in Walnut, Calif., is using utilities incentives to reduce operating costs and pay for upgrades and modernization efforts.

Gary Nellesen, director of facilities planning and management, has upgraded lighting fixtures in several buildings and automated energy management to control air conditioning across campus.

Mt. SAC received more than $1 mil-
lion worth of incentives to centralize
campus cooling. “We built a central
plant to make chilled water and pump
it around to our major buildings. It’s
much more efficient than having a lot
of small cooling systems distributed
building to building,” Nellesen says.
The college generates its own electric-
ity with natural gas and uses wasted
heat to warm the swimming pool.
“These resources are free, and they save
us $300,000 a year. We’ve done it for
about eight years, and it pays for itself.”
Nellesen also equipped select
buildings with meters to measure the
amount of electricity used. He hired a
commissioning agent to suggest ways
to improve electricity usage, since the
utility company pays incentives based
on energy saved. “We spent $100,000
to do this for one building and will earn
back what we spent in just one and a
half years,” he says. “By doing this in
several buildings, we’ve reduced our
energy spending by $750,000.”
For Nellesen, it’s important to be
sustainable, and the college supports
his efforts to reduce Mt. SAC’s carbon
footprint. But the true benefit comes
from the savings.

“The $1 million we save every year puts people in classrooms, and that’s the bottom line for any community college,” he says.

ELLEN ULLMAN is an education writer based in Fairfield, Conn.

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HEAR?

In his September jobs speech, President Obama asked Congress to provide $5 billion to repair and modernize community college campuses (Read more at: www.aacc.nche.edu/obamaasksfor5billion).