Star power
For University of Hawai’i-Manoa Chancellor Denise Konan, promoting sustainability on campus is a goal she’s been working toward since being appointed nearly a year ago. Thanks to a new partnership with the Environmental Protection Agency, the benefits of that goal are about to start paying real dividends.
Last October, Konan initiated a project to monitor energy use at the dorms. A single UH dorm room was retrofitted with lighting fixtures and appliances that were rated by the Energy Star program, which is a national initiative by the EPA that identifies cost-effective, energy-efficient products. The results of the experiment were so positive that Konan signed a partnership with the EPA last week to convert all appliances and lighting fixtures to Energy Star-rated products in the future.
As a result of the data gathered from the dorm-room experiment, UH-Manoa dormitories will reduce their electricity consumption by 840,000 kilowatt hours if fully converted to Energy Star products, says project director Stephen Meder of the UH School of Architecture. ‘Those dorms could be saving the equivalent of a hundred homes’ worth of energy on O’ahu,’ he says.
Meder also says he predicts massive savings on electricity costs once the 6 million square feet of occupied space on campus is eventually converted to Energy Star products. ‘Through this kind of program, we could be saving $3 or $4 million a year,’ he adds.
The project was coordinated by UH’s Sea Grant Program through the Center for Smart Building and Community Design. Researchers are also preparing to introduce plans for Energy Star conversion to the rest of the UH system and are working on guidelines on how best to use the products to save money and energy.
Meder added that it will take years to fully convert the campus to Energy Star use and that the focal point of the project in the short term is the conversion to Energy Star appliances and lighting at the dorms. ‘A single UH dorm room fitted with Energy Star products will save $138 a year in electricity costs,’ he says.
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