You are here

Interview with Paul Foote (Energy Efficiency and Conservation Specialist) and Karl Helmink (F&S Associate Director of Utilities and Energy Services)

Posted by Alec McKay on April 8, 2022

A document containing the notes from this interview is attached below.

 

Summary of the Clean Energy Transition Plan Interview:

Paul Foote - Energy Efficiency and Conservation Specialist

Karl Helmink - F&S Associate Director of Utilities and Energy Services

On 4/8/2022, the team met with Karl Helmink and Paul Foote. They both stressed an emphasis on energy conservation for the energy plan. They stated that a large problem stopping energy reduction is the “billions of dollars” worth of deferred maintenance that exist in campus buildings. This is in addition to the new buildings being constructed despite existing abandoned building space. They also informed us about the retro-commissioning team that they are both a part of. They reduce energy by an average of 25% for each building retro-commissioned and have saved the university over $100,000,000 in utilities since 2007. They do this by focusing on the “low hanging fruit,” this being scheduling, sensors and some maintenance. They roughly estimate that it will cost about 2 billion dollars to make the steam to hot water transition. This would take many years and about 10 boilers for redundancy. They recommend geothermal but warn that the university already has a lot of underground, so it would need to be placed carefully, possibly on the perimeter of campus. It would also still need a backup system (probably Abbott).