UB has been a leader in creating green buildings, working to reduce energy and material usage throughout our facilities, and striving for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification.
For the past decade, UB has been a leader in creating green buildings and working to reduce energy and material usage throughout our facilities.
In 2003, UB’s Creekside Village Community Center was the first building in Western New York to become certified under the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system.
Then in 2004, UB published its own High Performance Building Guidelines in support of New York State Executive Order 111. These guidelines were referenced by institutions across New York State and served to further our own commitment to build green.
Our early investments laid the foundation for five new LEED buildings—all opening within one year of another. Four are designed to meet LEED Gold standards and will save critical financial, as well as natural, resources.
William R. Greiner Hall, a residence hall that debuted in 2011, demonstrates UB's leadership in green construction. The building is packed with features such as high-efficiency lighting, low-flow faucets, and laundry room counters made from recycled Tide bottles. It's SUNY's first LEED Gold-designed residence hall.
Now, over a decade later, UB has over 10 LEED certified buildings. Check out specifics of each one above!
As part of a NYPA project, over 210 power meters have been installed at UB. The new internet based “Smart” power meters installed will permit UB to closely observe and manipulate power consumption within each building. Never before have we been able to track real-time power consumption in 5, 10 or 15 minute blocks of time. Having this information will greatly improve our ability to better control usage within our buildings and it allows us to verify conservation measures are performing as expected. Detailed usage information will allow us to establish a specific energy cost with a specific time frame, so we can target energy reductions when power prices are peaking.
A software platform was also installed with the new meters allowing easy access by multiple users to historical and real-time power data at each building. The platform will automatically upload the energy and demand data into EnergyCAP, our utility accounting system, at the end of each month. The platform will allow Campus Living to raise awareness with students occupying residence halls. The meters and internet based metering platform gives Facilities staff and others the tools they need to implement new energy conservation measures at every location and observe the real-time results.
The new power meters coupled with existing steam, chilled water and natural gas meters gives UB a comprehensive backbone of building energy data measurement tools. The building data will be used to rank building performance, identify new conservation opportunities, raise awareness, identify costs, measure operational effectiveness, test new strategies and improve overall campus sustainability.
