Natural Gas/Fuel Oil

• Many of our larger buildings are heated with natural gas and many of the conservation opportunities outlined in the electrical portion of this document are also used to reduce the consumption of natural gas:
• Variable volume HVAC systems.
• Occupancy sensors to allow space to operate at the unoccupied setting when not occupied.
• Carbon dioxide sensors to allow us to provide the exact amount of make- up air to spaces for proper comfort.
• Efficient make-up air systems for our laboratory hoods have been installed in Musser and in the SMEC project areas where lab hoods are installed. This equipment minimizes the amount of tempered outside air that is exhausted from the hoods while providing the required hood face velocity for safe hood operation.
• Additionally, we have been replacing inefficient boilers in many buildings with high efficiency boilers as funding becomes available.
• Many of our SDLC buildings are heated with fuel oil and our strategy has been to replace the existing boilers with high efficiency boilers.
• As the SDLC buildings and other buildings, like Admissions, are older houses that were constructed when energy was inexpensive, we have been installing insulation, siding and replacing leaky windows with new efficient windows.
• Throughout the campus we are insulating, sealing and making our buildings more energy efficient to reduce cooling and heating loads.