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 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.

The Woody Perennial  Polyculture (WPP) Research Site at the University of Illinois is working create a research farm in which the arrangement of plants is similar to that of the climate’s natural ecosystem, but uses plants that are more practical for human consumption. This research site is the first attempt at a large-scale WPP system in a temperate environment. The research from the farm is intended to show that the WPP system is a sustainable and economically advantageous alternative to the corn-soybean rotation that is commonly used on farms across the Midwest.

The long journey of transportation for crops and animals that are shipped, driven, and flown to factories before being sent to the University of Illinois dining halls is another area of concern in the reduced emissions efforts of the campus. In order to reduce the problem of food miles and their related emissions, the campus must close the loop in food production, use, and waste recycling.

In the Housing Lighting Retrofit a total of 5,515 T-12 fixtures were replaced with thinner, more energy effiecient T-8 fixtures in housing buildings around the University of Illinois' campus. This will incur a total Annual KWh  Savings of 791,331 hours.  The total Simple Payback is estimated to be 2.81 years.

In Lighting Retrofit #5 a total of 32,993 T-12 fixtures were replaced with thinner, more energy effiecient T-8 fixtures. This will incur a total Annual KWh  Savings of 5,414,849 hours. Fifty-five university buildings were involved in this part of the T-12 to T-8 Lighting Retrofit Project. The total Simple Payback is estimated to be 3.1 years.

The ICECF 2009 Lighting Retrofit was the second round of the T-12 to T-8 Lighting Retrofit Project. A total of 33,192 T-12 fixtures were replaced with thinner, more energy effiecient T-8 fixtures. This will incur a total Annual KWh  Savings of 5,335,909 hours. Thirty university buildings were involved in this round of the project. The total Simple Payback is estimated to be 1.17.

The ICECF 2008 Lighting Retrofit was the first round of the T-12 to T-8 Lighting Retrofit Project. A total of 52,810 T-12 fixtures were replaced with thinner, more energy effiecient T-8 fixtures. This will incur a total Annual KWh  Savings of 8,630,641 hours. Thirty-one university buildings were involved in this round of the project. The total Simple Payback is estimated to be 2.13.

The Sustainability Fellows program is designed to engage faculty throughout campus in the sustainability efforts occurring with the existing and future infrastructure on campus.  The goal of this Request for Proposals is to help create a living learning community where faculty and students can become involved in an open-innovation ecosystem related to campus buildings, land, and energy.  There are two levels of participation.

The Center for Sustainable Environment (CSE), iSEE's predecessor on campus, sought proposals in FY14 from faculty to support research activities related to specific Facilities & Services (F&S) sustainability projects. These projects were directly related to the Illinois Climate Action Plan (iCAP), which describes strategies to achieve campus sustainability goals.