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February 2025 Buyer's Share Report
Associated Project(s):RailSplitter Wind Farm provided the February 2025 Buyer's Share amounts by the hour, totaling 2,395.5 Megawatt hours.
The February 2025 Buyer's Share Report is attached below.
Attached Files:January 2025 Buyer's Share Report
Associated Project(s):RailSplitter Wind Farm provided the January 2025 Buyer's Share amounts by the hour, totaling 2,744.2 Megawatt hours.
The January 2025 Buyer's Share Report is attached below.
Attached Files:December 2024 Buyer's Share Report
Associated Project(s):RailSplitter Wind Farm provided the December 2024 Buyer's Share amounts by the hour, totaling 2,668.6 Megawatt hours.
The December 2024 Buyer's Share Report is attached below.
Attached Files:Boosting Immunity: The Benefits of Physical Activity
Associated Project(s):Boosting Immunity: The Benefits of Physical Activity
Discover how physical activity strengthens your body's natural defenses! Join us for an engaging session to explore how staying active boosts your immune system, prevents chronic illnesses and promotes overall well-being. This session is perfect for anyone looking to enhance their health and vitality through movement.
March 26, 12–1 pm • Wednesdays, March 5 - April 16, 12-1PM • Zoom
Dee Walls • Illinois Extension and the Interdisciplinary Health Sciences Institute
This opportunity is available online.
CHI Speaker Series Examining Environmental Impacts on Health: Warren Lavey
Associated Project(s):This speaker series brings together researchers on campus whose work touches on environmental impacts (e.g., air quality, water quality, weather patterns) on health, to share their current research and to foster discussion and collaboration. This week, professor Warren G Lavey will talk about how "Hospitals Should Help Address Climate Change Through Community Health Needs Assessments."
March 25, 12 pm • Zoom
Center for Health Informatics • IDPH, University of Illinois OSI
CHI Speaker Series Examining Environmental Impacts on Health: Warren Lavey
Learn About the Campus' New Rainwater Management Program
Associated Project(s):The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s Rainwater Management Program showcases a future vision for the campus that emphasizes the importance of rainwater retention and replenishment. The goal is to transition from the traditional viewpoint of stormwater runoff as a maintenance issue to one that envisions rainwater as an asset to preserve, harness and celebrate. Learn more about the program’s release in a virtual forum on from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday, April 2. Preregistration is required to attend the webinar. The RMP was funded by the Student Sustainability Committee.
Learn About the Campus' New Rainwater Management Program
April 2, 3–4 pm
Betsy Richardson • Facilities & Services
Clean Up Campus: Boneyard Creek Community Day 2025
Associated Project(s):Clean Up Campus: Boneyard Creek Community Day 2025
F&S is a proud co-sponsor of Boneyard Creek Community Day 2025 from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday, April 12 (rain date: May 3). The event begins at Scott Park (207 E. Springfield Avenue, Champaign) and includes lunch, music and educational displays. Sign up now at this link. Registration deadline is 5 p.m. April 5, but walk-up, day-of volunteers will also be welcomed.
April 12, 9 am–12 pm • Scott Park
Betsy Richardson • Facilities & Services
Safety and Efficiency in Fume Hood Selection
Associated Project(s):Safety and Efficiency in Fume Hood Selection
Laboratory fume hoods are critical in protecting laboratory personnel from chemical exposure; however, fume hoods may also be the largest energy consumers in a research university campus. The Grainger College of Engineering Office of Safety invites campus facilities, safety and laboratory personnel to an in-depth presentation on the latest developments in fume hood technologies, and how to leverage them to create the safest and most energy-efficient laboratories. More details and the registration link can be found at: https://emails.illinois.edu/newsletter/30/871793530.html
March 27, 12–1 pm • 3002 Electrical and Computer Engineering Building
Edward Chainani • Grainger College of Engineering
Archived info - prior project background info
Associated Project(s):The Revolving Loan Fund is managed by Facilities & Services (F&S) Utility and Energy Services that calculates cost avoidance from an RLF project using the fully loaded utility rates. The loan will be repaid at a fixed 1% interest rate with an annual payment equal to the calculated annual savings until the loan is fully repaid. When a project is funded by multiple funding sources, the annual savings to be returned to the RLF will be calculated by the payback associated with the work completed by the entire project.
Project Submission and Selection
Potential projects will be solicited from campus units by F&S Utility and Energy Services when there is at least $1M in funds available for allocation. Projects will be submitted through a web-based PDF form by the requesting campus department.
Project selection will be handled through the RLF Committee that includes the Executive Director of Facilities and Services, Associate Provost for Capital Planning, Associate Vice Chancellor for Research, Associate Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, Student Sustainability Committee Chair, Illinois Student Senate President, and a representative of the Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment. The Committee will meet on a semiannual basis to approve/reject projects.
Project selection will be based on the following weighted criteria:- Payback Period (30%)
Project has a short payback period. - Reduction of Greenhouse Gas Emissions (25%)
Does this project reduce greenhouse gas emissions for campus? - Revolving Loan Fund Size Impact (20%)
Projects that increase the Revolving Loan Fund size through grants or additional allocations. - Visibility (5%)
How visible/noticeable is the project to users of the facility, space and/or campus community? - Project Coordination (20%)
Projects that can be executed in conjunction with other planned or ongoing projects. The intent of the coordination is to make the RLF project more efficient to deliver for the University and/or departments.
Project Tracking
Revolving Loan Fund projects are tracked using the Green Revolving Investment Tracking System (GRITS). This interactive system tracks annual energy, financial, and carbon savings from energy efficiency and other resource conservation measures. - Payback Period (30%)
iCAP Portal Admin Meeting - March 14, 2025
Associated Project(s):Agenda
- Michael's updates
- Expand/Collapse buttons added to Project Updates listings. See examples:
- All Project Updates
- Project Updates search results
- Project Updates for collection: Monarch Butterfly projects
- Projects Updates for Sustainability iCAP Portal
- Projects Updates for key objective: 2.1 Energy Planning Document
- Projects Updates for theme: Education
- Projects Updates for place: Campus Instructional Facility
- Investigating an issue with some information connected to Projects (locations, funding info) and Metrics (targets, tracking) losing their connections to those projects.
- Information still in database, so I can restore connections, but it's been taking some careful and tedious effort to track this down and restore the connections.
- I've been practicing on a test site to make sure I get it right. Will fix connections on live site soon.
- Does not appear widespread, though unclear what the pattern is at this time
- Expand/Collapse buttons added to Project Updates listings. See examples:
- [DEFER TO NEXT TIME] Google Analytics numbers drop
- Steeper than others have experienced
- Probably some combination of less traffic and old analytics possibly not excluding bots/crawlers as effectively
- [DEFER TO NEXT TIME] Discussion of how to handle projects with large numbers of metrics (see notes from Sarthak & Michael's discussion)
Discussion
- [DEFER TO NEXT TIME] Google Analytics numbers drop
- [DEFER TO NEXT TIME] Discussion of how to handle projects with large numbers of metrics
TODOs
- Investigate how to hide Project Status from certain projects which aren't actually projects - they're meant to act as parents for other projects
- e.g. add a "Header" Project Status which hides the status
- Remove Project Status from hierarchical listing on theme pages and full project hierarchy listing
- Archived projects:
- Add link to Archived Projects on Projects page
- Hide archived projects from Theme page hierarchical listings
- Leave archived projects from Project Family sidebar section, for now - may revisit that decision in the future
- Michael's updates
land available for solar at airport
Associated Project(s):Willard Airport Director, Tim Bannon, and F&S Associate Director for Sustainability, Morgan White, discussed the potential for solar at Willard Airport. Tim identified approximately 100 acres available for solar.
Weekly Digest
Associated Project(s):A full week of warm weather is forthcoming, so we should be busy. We’ll be closed next week for Spring Break and right after that our full Mon – Fri schedule will resume. This Thursday we have another Instructional Class—hopefully it’s as well-attended as the last one!
This week, we’ll also grab the last of the worth-our-trouble abandoned bikes from storage.
The numbers:
Visitors: 36
Sales: 767.38
Bikes (Refurb): 2 for $395
Memberships: 7 for $210
Tires/tubes: 5 for $32Zipcar usage data for February 2025
Associated Project(s):The attached PDF contains performance metrics for ZipCar usage on campus for February 2025.
Land and Water Team March Monthly Meeting Minutes and Notes
Associated Project(s):The Land and Water team met on March 7th, 2025, at 9 am on Teams this month. In this week's meeting, the team discussed prairie strips, sustainable water usage on campus, milkweed plantings for pollinators, and activities to participate in this coming Arbor Day. The agenda and notes from the meeting are linked below.
Attached Files:Illinois Leadership Center is Now Certified Green!
Associated Project(s):The Illinois Leadership Center achieved Chrysalsis Level Green Office Certificaiton!!
Veo bicycles returning to campus in March
Associated Project(s):University bike sharing partner Veo is expected to return 750 bicycles (Class 2 e-bikes) to Champaign-Urbana this month. The company removes its entire local fleet for upkeep when ridership significantly decreases over the winter.
Click here to see official email announcement.
2023 Bee Campus Report
Associated Project(s):The prior annual reports were not submitted, so F&S worked to update the Bee Campus Committee members, update the Charge Letter, and submit the 2023 data. The Xerces Society approved the 2023 Bee Campus USA report on March 5, 2023.
Education iCAP Team March 2025 Meeting
Associated Project(s):The iCAP Education team met on teams from 4-5 pm on Monday March 3rd. First, we recapped the Green Career Forum and the Green Career Panel. Then we discussed updates on the collection of data for the AASHE Stars report, integrating sustainability language into course descriptions and developing the Gen-Ed sustainability requirement. Lastly the team introduced a sustainability graduate certificate and student internship opportunities. The meeting minutes are attatched.
Attached Files:2024 Campus Bike Plan in UI System News & Trends
Associated Project(s):An article was published in Illinois Public Media News on How the U of I's new Bicycle Plan aims to make the campus more bike-friendly. An excerpt from the article was featured on the University of Illinois System's News & Trends weekly email.