Vassar College – Nicholas Garafola – 2015

Goals

Nicholas Garafola was hired as an EDF Climate Corps fellow at Vassar College to develop a data management system that would help the college identify energy efficiency project opportunities, and could serve as the central data resource for the Committee, employee and student project ideas. To this point, Vassar had several individual actors working in their respective departments to improve and green college operations, but it was believed that a more centralized and streamlined process for project identification was needed.

Solutions

After reviewing the existing utility bill database and collecting additional data, Garafola developed a streamlined Excel-based tool to collect, organize and calculate a comprehensive greenhouse gas emissions inventory based on energy, waste, travel, fleet and paper purchasing data. He transformed utility bill tables into visual heat maps that showed large and small consumers for each utility type. Garafola then used the findings to identify a half-dozen boiler and lighting efficiency projects.

Potential Impact

Once implemented, the boiler and lighting retrofits could reduce annual energy costs by more than $6,500 and greenhouse gas emissions by 20 tonnes. These identified projects are potentially scalable across the entire campus and could save the college upwards of 10 percent on heating costs and tens of thousands of dollars in electricity costs annually. The Excel-based data management tool was formatted for use by Vassar’s Campus Committee on Sustainability to identify additional energy-efficiency project opportunities and could serve as the central data resource for the Committee, employee and student project ideas.