This project will improve the recycling process in buildings around campus by encouraging sustainable actions and improving the layout of waste and recycling bins within these buildings. Facilities & Services collaborated with ISTC to make an “Indoor Solid Waste and Recycling Collection Assessment”. This assessment determined that the type and layout of collection containers in buildings across campus should be standardized. An update would enable them to be co-located and allow for greater infrastructure consistency.

This program seeks projects to encourage the development of plug-in electric vehicle systems that can demonstrate the ability to recharge rapidly at high power levels

The IDEAS program - short for Innovative Development in Energy-Related Applied Science - provides a continuing opportunity for the rapid support of early-stage applied research to explore pioneering new concepts with the potential for transformational and disruptive changes in energy technology.

The projects that make up ARPA-E's ADEPT program, short for "Agile Delivery of Electrical Power Technology," are paving the way for more energy efficient power conversion and advancing the basic building blocks of power conversion: circuits, transistors, inductors, transformers, and capacitors.

The I2O develops game-changing information science and technology to ensure information advantage for the U.S. and its allies. To accomplish this, I2O sponsors basic and applied research in three thrust areas: cyber, analytics, symbiosis

Recent advances in communications, computation, and sensing technologies offer unprecedented opportunities for the design of cyber-physical systems with increased responsiveness, interconnectivity and automation. To meet new challenges and societal needs, the Energy, Power, Control and Networks (EPCN) Program invests in systems and control methods for analysis and design of cyber-physical systems to ensure stability, performance, robustness, and security.

This program applyies the Department of Energy's technical expertise to help ensure the security, resiliency and survivability of key energy assets and critical energy infrastructure.

Through its Research, Development, and Deployment work, the Office of Energy is pursuing technologies to improve grid reliability, efficiency, flexibility, functionality, and security; and making investments and sponsoring demonstrations aimed at bringing new and innovative technologies to maturity and helping them transition to market.

The Vehicle Technologies Office supports research, development (R&D), and deployment of efficient and sustainable transportation technologies that will improve energy efficiency, fuel economy, and enable America to use less petroleum. 

Some relevant programs under this office include

The Building Technologies office leads a network of research and industry partners to continually develop innovative, cost-effective energy saving solutions in building design. Some of the relevant programs under the Building Technologies office include 

1. Emerging Technologies
2. Residential Building

The mission of the ASCR program is to discover, develop, and deploy computational and networking capabilities to analyze, model, simulate, and predict complex phenomena important to the Department of Energy.

CIS supports fundamental and innovative research necessary for designing, constructing, managing, maintaining, operating and protecting efficient, resilient and sustainable civil infrastructure systems. Research that recognizes the role that these systems play in societal functioning and accounts for how human behavior and social organizations contribute to and affect the performance of these systems is encouraged. 

The goal of this Smart & Connected Communities (S&CC) solicitation is to support strongly interdisciplinary, integrative research and research capacity-building activities that will improve understanding of smart and connected communities and lead to discoveries that enable sustainable change to enhance community functioning

The Campus Cyberinfrastructure program invests in coordinated campus-level cyberinfrastructure (CI) components of data, networking, and computing infrastructure, capabilities, and integrated services leading to higher levels of performance, reliability and predictability for science applications and distributed research projects.

In FY11, the Retrocommissioning teams completed eight buildings. The Facilities & Services Retrocommissioning Team at the University of Illinois received the 2011 Illinois Governor’s Sustainability Award at a ceremony on Thursday, October 27, 2011. Established in 1987, this award has been presented to both public and private organizations that have achieved significant progress on projects designed to protect the environment and improve sustainability within the State of Illinois.

The University of Illinois became an Affiliate of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) SmartWay® Transportation Partnership in June 2020, after University Housing’s Dining Services joined SmartWay in 2013. The SmartWay program aims to reduce global freight emissions by providing strategies for shippers and carriers to adopt more sustainable practices, and Affiliates help spread the word about sustainable supply chain transportation efforts and grow the SmartWay Program. 

® SmartWay is a registered service mark of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). 

As part of the campus “zero waste” policy we have diverted the sawdust from the Mill shop to the Horse Farm.

The Facility Standards for campus do not permit bicycles to be brought into buildings.  This is due to the impact on maintenance required for interior spaces when bicycles are brought into hallways, stairwells, and individual rooms.  However, there is a need for sheltered bicycle parking during winter months.  Therefore, F&S has worked to design a prototype indoor bike parking system.  The preliminary design shows that some interior spaces can be retrofitted to include indoor bike parking.  These spaces must be approved by the Architecture Review Committee, and they must follow all safe

One potential method for acheiving the 2015 iCAP goal for on-campus solar is to retrofit existing campus buildings with rooftop solar.  The amount of sun shine on each roof, the viability of the building itself, and the funding mechanisms all need to be reviewed and resolved for this idea to be implemented.  The viability for each building includes approval from the Architectural Review Committee, agreement of the building occupant facility leaders, and structural and electrical viability for the building.  As of 2016, the financial payback for solar photovoltaics is not strong enough to ea