A method for greening university campus buildings while fostering hands-on inquiry-based students' learning

The University of Arizona is engaged in the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment agreement that encourages U.S. universities to exercise leadership in their communities and throughout society by modeling ways to minimize global warming emissions, and provide the knowledge and educated graduates to achieve climate neutrality. Greening campus buildings is one of the major visions for this mission. This paper focuses on a methodology that was developed by the author and supported by Vice President for Student Affairs and University Housing and Residence Life, and Director of Sustainability, to educate students to conduct advanced Level III energy audit and computer analysis to identify energy efficiency improvement opportunities for three residence life campus buildings. An engineered set of site forms and specific tools and instrumentations and advanced computer simulation techniques were used during the 2011 Fall semester to facilitate the energy audits. Research team presented their findings to building directors and demonstrated that the three buildings total area of 283,174 ft² consumed on average an annual 44.2 KBtu/ft² at the cost of $401,610 per year. The energy saving strategies indicated a 17.3% or $69,410 annual operating cost savings. In addition, two of three buildings have benefitted from the project by being successfully certified for Energy Star Designation.