Florida A&M University – Charlan Waldron – 2013

Goals

Charlan Waldron spent her summer working for Florida A&M University (FAMU) in Tallahassee, Florida. Her goals included proposals for a greenhouse gas inventory, a lighting retrofit, revised HVAC maintenance program and student and employee engagement at the university’s main campus. 

Solutions

One of Waldron’s projects involved no capital expenditures; she identified energy savings that could be captured through managing existing systems with no up-front cost and bringing awareness to the University Energy Policy. Also, while Waldron limited her detailed investigation of lighting retrofit opportunities to FAMU’s main library, there is potential for lighting upgrades in other areas of campus where the university could see up to 15 percent in immediate savings.

Potential Impact

Overall, if all of her projects are implemented, FAMU could save over $150,000 annually. Combined, all of the projects have a payback of less than one year with a potential savings of almost 1.2 million kilowatt hours and more than 900 metric tons of carbon emissions annually.