As the Biostar program expands and moves forward, UW-Madison has an opportunity to make some smart decisions that can pay off for the future of the school. UW-Madison is a large university with more than 330 buildings, according to the Facilities Planning and Management's Web site. These buildings and the new Biostar buildings require a lot of energy to run computers, heating, air conditioning, AV equipment, lighting etc.
The vast majority of energy to power these elements comes from the burning of fossil fuels, which leads to a multitude of negative environmental and human health effects, including global warming, acid rain, asthma and other respiratory diseases, smog and premature death, just to name a few. One way we can reduce the impact of fuels is to build or renovate buildings to be as energy efficient as possible.
When buildings are built or renovated, we can implement environmentally friendly design principles. Environmentally friendly designs include daylighting and passive solar heating and cooling, which reduce our reliance on electricity produced primarily from fossil fuels like coal or natural gas. Energy consumption also costs money and implementing environmentally friendly design elements into buildings reduces energy the amount of energy used and costs as well.
Daylighting utilizes daylight to light buildings. Artificial light accounts for approximately 40 to 50 percent of the energy consumption of many commercial and institutional buildings. Daylighting can be accomplished in multiple ways. Increasing windows and skylights is one. Clerestory windows are windows placed in a row above eye level that allow for privacy but also let additional sunlight into a room. An open floor plan is important so that light can travel from room to room. In buildings using daylighting, it is important to have lights than can be adjusted and dimmed so that additional light is used only as necessary. Daylighting has other benefits besides lowering lighting costs: Daylighting can reduce heating and cooling costs because daylight uses less heat per unit of illumination than artificial light.
Sunlight can also provide supplementary building heat through passive solar heating. Passive solar heating can lead to savings of up to 50 percent of a building's heating bill while only costing 1 percent more to construct. Passive solar heating works in a couple of ways. One way is through the direct gain system, which allows sun to shine into a building; its heat is stored by the building's thermal mass in materials such as concrete or stone floor slabs. The materials hold the heat then slowly release it. Another option is an isolated gain system. An isolated gain system is one where the system is isolated from the primary living area, such as a sunroom or solar greenhouse with convective loops into the living space.
Buildings can also be passively cooled through design elements such as overhangs shading the building.
One example of a building that utilizes some of these design techniques is the McKay Center at the Arboretum. Clerestory windows provide daylighting into the multipurpose room. Low, overhanging eves help shade the building on the south and west. In addition to passive solar heating, the McKay Center uses some solar technology.
Photovoltaic panels are installed on the roof to generate electricity.
WisPIRG is running a campaign entitled Big Red, Go Green! which is working with UW-Madison to get a 7 percent reduction in energy use on campus from 2000-2008 and also to ensure that new buildings on campus are built to be as energy efficient as possible. As co-coordinator of this campaign, I encourage UW-Madison to use more of these design principles when they build and remodel buildings on campus. The decisions we make now will help UW-Madison and students money and reduce our contributions to environmental and human health problems.
