For many years, the UI has grown significant quantities of biomass plant products at the Energy Farm on South Farms. There have been a few preliminary attempts to identify a post-research use for this material, including the cancelled Vet Med Combined Heat and Power (CHP) project and a study of the compatibility with existing boilers at Abbott Power Plant.  Meanwhile the biomass material continues to be stockpiled at the Energy Farm. This project is looking to convert the existing (and future) biomass from the Energy Farm into power for the on-site Energy Farm facility.

Bousfield Hall LEED® Certified: Bousfield Hall, which opened in Fall 2013, became the third university facility to achieve LEED Platinum status, the U.S. Green Building Council’s highest certification level, joining the Business Instructional Facility and Lincoln Hall.

The Business Instructional Facility was awarded the LEED Platinum Certification on December 2, 2009, having achieved 52 of the 69 possible points on the LEED Scorecard. The construction was especially strong in the Indoor Environmental Quality, receiving 13 of the 15 possible points in that area. This building is the first business facility at a public university anywhere in the world to earn platinum certification through LEED.  Cesar Pelli,  a U. of I.

The ECE Building acheived LEED platinum certification in November 2019, and it is striving for a net-zero energy certification. From a vast array of photovoltaic cells, to a chilled beam system to cool and heat the classroom tower, ECE wil accomplish a major campus addition with maximum space and minimal carbon footprint.

Excerpt from the ECE building website:

ECO-OLYMPICS is an energy competition between residence halls on campus. Our goal is to engage, educate, and motivate students/employees/professors to change their behavior, and have a good time while doing it. add us on Facebook  and  Sign-up for this year's competition HERE! and visit EcoOlympics web page for more details.

The Illini Energy Dashboard provides clearly visible understandable information data and information to students and staff of selected University buildings describing energy consumption rate (electrical, chilled water and steam) so that users can make educated choices about the way they can affect energy consumption and conservation. The biggest challenge in successfully creating a campus-wide goal of energy reduction is being able to evoke a behavioral change resulting in energy conservation and sustainability efforts.

As the iCAP 2020 says, "Using information gathered from capital projects, faculty members and researchers can collaborate with F&S to develop a reference database of calibrated energy models for campus buildings. This might be the product of student classroom projects. The campus could then use these models to prioritize building retrofits and determine the preferred level of improvements (i.e., envelope versus mechanicals) for each building." (Page 41).

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Facilities Standards shall be applied for all remodeling and new construction at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  These Standards are intended to achieve the value consistent with an institute of higher education.  Where these Standards exceed minimum Code and/or Capital Development Board (CDB) requirements, the Standards shall apply.  Where the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Facilities Standards and CDB

The Solar Decathlon House at the Energy Farm, called the Gable Home, is now equipped with a horizontal loop geothermal energy system. The loop is 3/4 inch.

The Fruit Farm Admin building uses geothermal energy.

Campus researchers are installing a geothermal monitoring well in the northwest corner of the John Bardeen Quad during December 2018.  The borehole will be 450 feet deep and it will allow campus to investigate the applicability of using geothermal heat exchange at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The UIUC campus has several research labs across campus, with amazing cutting-edge research underway and accomplished over the last 150+ years.  These research facilities are transformative for the global community, yet they also use a lot of energy and water and produce waste products.  This project aims to integrate the iCAP objectives in the research areas on campus, through an open and concensus-based discussion with sustainability staff and research staff, as well as interested students and researchers.

The Covid-19 Pandemic has drawn our attention to the unintended consequences of efficient building ventilation. Buildings have historically lacked the capability of verifying, managing, or communicating real-world ventilation and filtration performance for aerosol removal and infection control in occupied spaces due to limitations in existing building assessment tools.

The Ikenberry Commons Dining Hall was awarded the LEED Silver Certification on August 17, 2011. The dining hall received 34 of the 69 possible points on the LEED Scorecard. Energy saving features of the facility include recycled content in 20 percent of the materials used to construct the building; water-efficient plumbing fixtures; energy-efficient lighting, heating, and cooling; low-VOC paints, coatings, and sealants; and a white reflective roof that reduces the need for cooling.

The Illinois Natural History Survey was awarded the LEED Silver Certification on August 1, 2012. The building received 36 of the 69 possible points. With a staff of over 200 scientists and technicians, the Illinois Natural History Survey is recognized as the premier natural history survey in the nation. The resources needed to effectively support the Survey have changed considerably since their current headquarters building was completed in 1942.  

Lighting is responsible for less than 10% of the campus energy demand, yet it is the most visible and actionable energy conservation effort available to everyone.  Like you turn off your lights when you leave a room at home, the University is seeking to turn off lights when rooms are unoccupied, and reduce energy consumption from lamps throughout campus.  These efforts include replacing incandescent lamps with LEDs or flourescent lamps, installing occupancy and daylight sensors, and encouraging sustainable behaviors.

The NCSA Petascale Computing Facility was awarded the LEED Gold Certification on November 4, 2011.The building received 40 of the 69 possible points on the LEED Scorecard. Energy saving features of the building include a power distribution system that is based on 480 V power for the computational equipment, water-cooled computational and storage equipment (which is twice as efficient as air cooling), external cooling towers that allow for natural chilling of water for a large part of the year, law-impact landscaping with native prairie plants, and use of best practice construction methods.

This project will be a guaranteed energy savings contract to be completed in conformance with the provisions of the public university energy conservation act. An energy services company (esco) will be selected through a request for proposal process to serve as a qualified provider. The esco will provide an investment grade audit and recommend energy conservation measures based on merit. This is approximately a $4,300,000 performance contract guaranteed to produce an annual energy savings of $850,000.

The 20.8 acre Solar Farm on the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign South Farms is a Power Purchase Agreement with Phoenix Solar South Farms, LLC, producing an estimated 7, 864 MWh/year of solar energy used solely by the Urbana campus.

The 2015 iCAP, chapter 3, objective 2 is "Expand on-campus solar energy production.  By FY20, produce at least 12,500 MWh/year, and by FY25 at least 25,000 MWh/year, from solar installations on campus property."  Commonly used solar technologies are solar photovoltaics for electricity, solar thermal water heating, and passive solar design for space heating and cooling.

Efficiently Deliverying Green Energy at the Vet Med Complex

The Facilities and Services team has partnered with Energy Systems Group (ESG) a leading energy services provider, to develop a comprehensive energy savings performance contract (ESCO) project at the Veterinary Medicine Complex.

The Vet Med ESCO project will provide innovative energy efficiency and technology, demonstrable energy savings, and long-term financing solutions for modernization of our facilities and energy infrastructure. The expected energy reduction for this project is 40 percent.

The M.T. Geoffrey Yeh Student Center in Newmark Civil Engineering was awarded LEED Silver ceritfication on August 7, 2012. The Yeh Center achieved LEED certification for energy use, lighting, water and material use as well as incorporating a variety of other sustainable strategies, such as a green roof and the generous use of natural light. Chicago-area design firm Teng & Associates Inc. was involved with the project for over a decade and oversaw the design process from start to finish. 

Yanfeng Ouyang (Professor), Shelly Zhang (Professor), and their PhD students from the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering are collaborating with Facilities and Services to develop a model to optimize the pedestrian flow on the Quad Day 2020.

The Illinois Cross-Campus Bicycles (ICCB) program is a bike sharing program within the departments of Kinesiology and Community Health, and is available for the faculty, staff, and paid graduate students of each department. This program was founded by Professor Wojciech Chodzko-Zajko in 2008 and has been running successfully since then.  

The Wellness Center on campus is dedicated to promoting wellness in many dimensions.  Encouraging walking for wellness is one of the key programs the center offers.  The iWalk Toolkit provides tips, programs, attire advice, motivation and more.

Y-Cycles is a bike sharing program led by the university YMCA. Currently the program is waiting on the shipment of two bikes for use in the summer of 2013. The program is also in the process of purchasing two more bikes, in order to make four available for use in the Fall 2013 semester.

Our Mission: The Illinois Geothermal Coalition is a group of corporations, non-profits, geothermal professionals, and researchers seeking to establish Illinois as a leader in geothermal energy.

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is helping to promote and encourage participation in the Solar Urbana-Champaign program. 

The successful Solar Urbana-Champaign group purchasing program is available again in 2018. Since 2016, the program led to the installation of over 2 megawatts of solar on 241 properties in Champaign, Piatt, and Vermilion Counties. The program educated over a thousand individuals about solar and helped people save on solar through volume purchasing.
 
In 2021, the program will conduct its sixth round of bulk purchasing.

Near campus exists an under-utilized living laboratory that could contribute significantly to student education and improve campus sustainability initiatives like iCAP. This 13-acre prairie experiment was established in 2018 with funding from a USDA grant. Across 96 plots, the project was designed to examine interactions between soil, microbes, prairie plants, agrochemicals, and bees with the goal of identifying best prairie restoration practices for habitat adjacent to crops.

The Boneyard Creek is a wonderful water resource for education, research, and stormwater management for campus.

While the 2017 Campus Master Plan provides an overall vision for a sustainable campus, the plan prioritizes buildings over landscapes. There is no cohesive vision for resilient campus landscapes and limited guidelines for ensuring landscapes’ long-term success. F&S is developing a Landscape Master Plan including a shared vision for the overall campus landscape and specific design guidelines. This will include establishing a steering committee, hiring an external landscape architecture firm, and initiating extensive public and stakeholder engagement.

The Committee on Natural Areas is responsible for maintaining and managing University of Illinois owned properties which have been acquired to enhance environmental/ ecological research and education. The role of CNA is to provide and facilitate long-term research and teaching opportunities on University-owned properties. Sites are managed to protect both the integrity of the ecological systems and the bological research that takes place on them.

Ten University properties are currently under the direct supervision of the Committee on Natural Areas:

Illinois Street Residence Hall is receiving a renovation, including a new food hall space. The roof of this food hall will have a green roof installed on top. This green roof was added as part of their plan to improve building efficiency and sustainability, and showcase a vibrant residential experience to students, parents, and guests who visit camps, as well install climate control additions.

The Miles C Hartley Selections Garden (Hartley Garden) comprises four of the 57 acres within the Arboretum and is used for educational and research purposes. Construction of this garden was completed in 1994.

Rain is a blessing and a curse on our research farms.  We cannot grow a crop with out it but when it comes in excessive quantities has a destructive result on University farms.  Our farms are intertwined too so as water flows downhill it passes from one department farm to the next.  This project looks to redesign the Energy Farm waterway and install a waterway on the Animal Sciences farm to the west so that water flow can be channeled to the Embarrass River in a more direct and environmentally sound path.

The University of Illinois Arboretum contains gardens, collections, and habitats that transform 160 acres of the south campus. Not only does the Arboretum serve as a beautiful area for the public to enjoy, but as a “living laboratory” for University students studying plants sciences and fine and applied arts.

Unlike traditional pavement, porous asphalt allows some of the stormwater to flow through the pavement and into the soil below which offers benefits in flood control, water quality treatment, and extends pavement life since the base is well drained. Traditional pavements cause increased volumes of stormwater runoff. Effective porous asphalt removes the pollutants from stormwater. Although porous asphalt is more expensive, the total project cost is similar to traditional asphalt pavement since stormwater infrastructure (i.e. curbs, gutters, and storm drains) is not required.

The Red Oak Rain Garden soaks up rainwater, enhances the campus and community aesthetic and educational experience, and promotes well-being for everyone who visits. 

Constructed in 2006 by Prof. Tony Endress and his NRES 420 class, a garden renovation is building on this original effort. The new planting palette installed Fall 2019 has earned recognition from several conservation organizations. 

The Natual Resources Building is the site of another native species planting project, both in front of the building and behind it on Pennsylvania Avenue. This project is funded by the Student Sustaianability Project.

Illinois Path is a vision to transform the Military Axis from its current use into a landscape that incorporates prairie, savanna, a wet prairie swale, and woodland.  With implementation of the Illinois Path, the University has an opportunity to explicitly link the prairie ecosystem and the richness of its soils to the early agricultural legacy of this Land-Grant University represented by the Mumford House and the Morrow Plots.

A tall grass prarie garden that mimics the natural Illinois prairie landscape of Illinois was planted on the Vet Med Campus. The garden consists of 40 to 50 different plants and around 7,000 seedlings. The Student Sustainability funded the project for $20,000 to cover all costs excluding labor, which will be done by volunteers.

Sustainability isn’t just happening “out there;” it’s a consideration every day right here on our campus. By using our own facilities and community as a miniature model of the world at large, we can learn things that will make this campus better, but also make the world better.

Launched in February 2018, iSEE’s Living Lab program is designed to link campus sustainability targets to national and global sustainability, energy, and environment challenges.

The Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment (iSEE) is responsible for leading campus sustainability efforts. To set an example for students, faculty, and staff, iSEE is proposing a markable — and visible — program that will reduce waste and beautify campus.  
 

EnviroPure is a food waste elimination system that is a self-contained unit that can be continually fed food waste and dispose the waste. The system is designed to solve the environmental, operations, and economic issues associated with the disposal of food waste. The unit keeps optimal temperatures and oxygen levels for aerobic decomposition to take place more quickly. This results in a complete elimination of food waste without odors, sludge build-up, and system clean out requirements.

The dining halls at the University residency halls produce an estimated average 14,962.5 pounds, or 7 tons, of food waste every week. To combat the amount of this food waste that goes to the landfills a pilot on-site  vermi-composting project on the Sustainable Student Farm will be created. The project has the potential to turn into a campus-wide vermi-composting model.

The Resilience Commitment is focused on climate adaptation and community capacity-building to deal with a changing climate and resulting extremes.

iCAP Teams report annually on progress made toward Illinois Climate Action Plan (iCAP) objectives in their area of focus, and the Resilience Team advocates for achieving the iCAP 2020 objectives related to community resilience.

Green Your Dorm will be a month long competition held at LAR. We are aiming to get students especially in the Sustainability LLC to participate. During February, there will first be a week in which participants will receive a checklist of ways to "certify" their room. These include things such as putting in CFL bulbs and adding a recycling bin. After a week, rooms will be reviewed and can get certified. From then on out, there will be weekly challenges and ways to earn points for continuing to live "green" and having a green dorm.

Who We Are

Illinois Solar Decathlon is an interdisciplinary registered student organization with over 60 undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. We compete in the international, Department of Energy-sponsored Solar Decathlon Build and Solar Decathlon Design competitions. Illinois Solar Decathlon is comprised of an executive board, a build competition team, a design competition team, and a concept team, which fosters skills and knowledge development for younger organization members.

The global sustainability crisis is an opportunity for humanity to learn to flourish without compromising the natural systems upon which we depend. A few of the interrelated challenges presented through the global sustainability crisis include Global climate change, Persistent poverty, Food and water insecurity, Lack of quality education, Social inequities, and Loss of Biodiversity.

Competitions bring awareness to sustainability through campus life. Through education, demonstration, and organization, these short term events and national competitions highlight specific conservation areas and everyday routines in a way that creates change in lifestyles and encourages reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

A brief introduction to Water Environment Federation - American Water Works Association (WEF-AWWA) Student Chapter UIUC

We have been involved in organizing events and meetings that orient students towards the water industry. 

Listed below are some of our past activities:

Global demand for food, energy, and water is increasing, which poses the challenge of how to meet these demands in an environmentally and economically sustainable way. At present, energy production is dominated by carbon-intensive fossil fuels; however, renewable energies are being integrated into the energy sector at an increasing rate. Bioenergy crops reduce dependence on fossil fuels, but the efficiency of crops converting sunlight to stored energy is low — and the water requirements from agronomic and industrial perspectives is high.

A large body of research exists on robots and autonomous technology, but still little understanding of how to integrate them into everyday life. While people seem relatively comfortable with a Roomba vaccum, a subservient robot, they might be less willing to let technology assist in other areas of their living space. However, adapting technology into the home could have significantly positive benefits for the occupant. 

This project, funded in late Fall 2019, targets reducing single-occupancy vehicle usage via a Crowdsourced Commuting (CC) Program, a ridesharing system that provides user-oriented service to travelers — especially commuters — by aggregating similar travel demands through online platforms such as smartphone apps.

Funded in Spring 2020, this project aims to enhance water and energy security and resilience in urban systems, agricultural applications, and military bases by using groundwater resources and geothermal energy as an integrated system. Potential applications will improve military readiness and urban resilience to climate change by providing reliable indoor climate control and uninterrupted access to water.

As different generations of individuals change and evolve, so may their transportation habits. However, it’s still an open question as to why younger individuals are shifting to driving less and owning fewer cars. On a college campus, students learn how to depend less on cars and more on public transit, bicycles, and walking.

In everyday life, we think of heat as a measure of temperature. To engineers, however, heat is actually a signal of energy transfer — the “heat” you feel is energy being transferred from a warmer thing to a cooler one.