Facilities Management, Northwestern University

Northwestern's Commitment to Sustainability

Northwestern’s University-wide sustainability program, sustainNU, commits to creating an ecologically sound, socially just, and economically sustainable culture that engages students, faculty, and staff. In 2017, sustainNU initiated a University-wide Strategic Sustainability Plan to solidify Northwestern’s commitment to mitigating climate change. The comprehensive plan details the next five years of environmental stewardship—laying the groundwork for achieving net-zero emissions by 2050. Facilities staff members play crucial roles in achieving the University’s sustainability goals.

Stakeholders from throughout the University, including Facilities, partnered with sustainNU to form working groups that helped develop the Strategic Sustainability Plan. The plan focused on five program areas—built environment, transportation, resource conservation, experiential learning and communication, and engagement.

Facilities oversee both Chicago and Evanston campuses’ 222 buildings and execute several objectives within the built environment program area. Built environment is the primary focus for Facilities because of its role in the upkeep, maintenance, and service related needs of the University that help to reduce its environmental impact.

Key focus areas for the built environment include:

• Energy and water efficiency in existing buildings and grounds
• Renewable energy use
• Sustainability in new construction and building renovations
• Sustainability awareness and outreach programs for building users

• Completed our first comprehensive greenhouse gas emissions inventory. sustainNU will leverage the results to help identify emission reduction opportunities, inform the climate action planning effort, and measure progress toward our objective of becoming net zero by 2050.
• Embarked on an extensive energy data audit with the support from a Chicago-based energy efficiency-consulting group. This process involved auditing energy data for all University-owned buildings for the fiscal years 2012 through 2017.
• Installed new, modern looking LED light fixtures in the ground level of the Lakeside Parking Structure, and the garage spaces at the McManus Center, 800 Elgin, and 1201 Davis Street. The new light fixtures use at least 60 percent less energy than the old fixtures. The upgrades are expected to reduce electricity use by 444,419 kWh annually and save close to $40,000 in electricity costs. These projects will cut annual greenhouse gas emissions equal to the amount generated by 70 passenger vehicles each year.
• Continued to improve the heating distribution system by identifying steam leaks and other distribution thermal losses. In the Evanston campus, the annual survey of 1851 steam traps that began in 2013 found that 23 percent of the steam traps were failing, allowing leaks of over 100 million pounds of steam. This is equivalent to the annual energy use of 800 average homes. Northwestern’s Engineering Shop took action and replaced or repaired failed and leaky traps throughout the campus. By 2015, less than 4 percent of steam traps were failing.
• Northwestern will implement an Energy Management Information System (EMIS) by the end of 2018 and has selected Lucid’s market-leading BuildingOS software for this project. Lucid BuildingOS makes it easier to use building operations data to make performance improvements that reduce costs and enhance sustainability performance. The system will integrate and centralize utility data, making it possible to view data for electricity, gas, steam, chilled water, and domestic water usage in one central web platform. The platform will graphically display usage, create dashboards, calculate associated greenhouse gas emissions, and provide energy benchmarking (measurement of performance against best in class) among Northwestern's buildings and National buildings of similar types.