If students knows how their actions affect the use of electricity on campus will they change the way they act?
That question and others will be addressed in a two-year research project by Western Michigan doctoral student Kate Binder. Her project, supported by Honeywell, will explore whether information on energy use can lead to a lasting and measurable change by students.
Binder described the project, saying: "As building technologies become more and more efficient, behavior change initiatives have been dubbed the last frontier for sustainable buildings. However, inspiring behavior change to reduce energy consumption is a notoriously difficult task and many research questions remain unanswered. This project is truly progressive because it will answer a number of these pending questions in this very important area of campus sustainability."
Binder goes on to say that most people who use electricity on a college campus are not aware of the magnitude of their impact. "They don't have to pay the bills," Binder said. "This is where the Lucid Dashboard comes in. The dashboard displays a building's real-time electricity consumption on a touchscreen or website where building occupants can interact with the data and learn about their consumption. The dashboard makes campus electricity conspicuous."
The dashboards will be available in 22 buildings and nine of them will have touch screens. Beginning in the spring of 2014, a sample of touchscreens will go live in buildings across campus, providing answers on how this kind of feedback effects behavior in all kinds of settings, including residence halls, apartments, classrooms and offices.
The second part of the research project addresses the question: How can the university leverage dashboard feedback into information that is meaningful enough to change behavior? The types of programs, technology designs, and social influences that can be used to create a campus where energy conservation is the norm will be explored.
"These questions are huge," Binder said. "And luckily a lot of people are asking them. And thanks to the support of Honeywell, we get to get to be the ones answering them."
Binder thanked the university administration, especially president John M. Dunn, for development of "a campus culture where profound and vital sustainability research is not only encouraged, but also supported."
Binder's presentation of her research project -- believed to be the first of its kind -- was the introduction to Campus Sustainability Day, a time to celebrate WMU's efforts in cutting back its energy use and its having set a goal to reduce its energy use by 25 percent by 2020.
Right now, energy-efficiency improvements are ongoing in more than 50 WMU buildings. These changes are expected to reduce annual energy consumption by 14,800 MMBtu, equivalent to removing 388 cars from the road or planting 51,000 trees, said David Morgan, of Honeywell. That translates to a projected savings of nearly $250,000 in energy and operating costs each year.
Morgan said that WMU has been 10 years ahead of its peers when it comes to sustainability and his company is thankful to be a partner with the school.
This is only the most recent step the university has taken toward reducing its energy consumption. As Dr. Dunn told the crowd gathered to celebrate the day, since 1996, the school has decreased its overall energy use by 15 percent while the square footage of buildings on campus has gone up by 19 percent. He equated that to adding 2.3 million trees to the planet or removing 26,000 vehicles from the roads.
WMU has seven buildings that are LEED certified and 10 more are going through the certification process. The College for Health and Human Services on campus is the first university building in the nation to earn LEED certification for an existing building.
Former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman, also the former head of the Environmental Protection Agency in the administration of George W. Bush, praised WMU for being the definition of sustainability since its work in that area had been going on for many years.
She also called the research project an exciting one and said that getting individuals to understand the cumulative effect of their behavior is the key to having the kind of world we want. "When we talk about the equivalents of how many trees are added or how many vehicles are removed from the roads what we mean is having clean air to breathe. What happens here can show what makes people think twice about how they use energy. Remember, we don't inherit the planet from our ancestors we borrow it from our children."
To close out the celebration, Harold Glasser, director of campus sustainability, talked about a Japanese phrase that translates to "no waste." He said that as is the case with many Japanese phrases there are layers of meanings and this one also translates to having remorse for creating waste.
The results of the project Binder is undertaking could show how we develop habits and mindsets so that we don't have to have the sense of regret that comes with being wasteful.
The payoffs will be "unfathomable," Glasser said.
Writer: Kathy Jennings, Second Wave Media
Source: Campus Sustainability Day Celebration, WMU
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