The News-Gazette printed this story about the geothermal at the Campus Instructional Facility: https://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/university-illinois/renewable-en...

"URBANA — The University of Illinois’ glossy new building at Springfield Avenue and Wright Street represents the next step in its sustainability goals.

The four-story, 122,000- square-foot, $75 million Campus Instructional Facility is also the biggest geothermal installation on the UI campus.

Its geothermal system can pump 135 tons of hot or cool air into the building. That’s twice as much as the next biggest geothermal system on campus, and about 30 times the amount pumped into an average home.

“The whole world knows about solar and wind power and things like that — hydroelectric power, too — but that’s only the electric side of energy. Energy also includes heating and cooling,” said Morgan White, director of sustainability at UI Facilities & Services. “It’s truly transformative, because it’s moving into the phase of getting us clean thermal energy and not just clean electricity.”

Electricity provides heating and cooling as well, she said, but it’s primarily provided by natural gas, propane and other nonrenewable sources of energy.

The key to the geothermal endeavor? Forty boreholes dug into the Bardeen Quad next to Grainger Library. They’re 20 feet apart, 6 inches wide and drilled 450 feet deep.

Initially, the project required 60 boreholes, but UI researchers reduced that figure — and made the system financially feasible — by checking the thermal conductivity of different rock and soil layers, or the rate that heat passes through them, while considering the depth and flow rate of groundwater.

To keep the building temperate year-round, a mixture of water and glycol circulates from a heat pump in the mechanical room into a pipe that runs up and down the underground field of boreholes.

In winter, the pump pulls heat from the ground into the building. In summer, heat is pumped from the building back into the ground.

“It’s like when you have a bathtub that’s a little too hot or a little too cold, and you pour some water in and stir it up,” White said.

In all, the system reduces the building’s energy consumption by 65 percent compared to a typical heating/cooling installation, saving about $45,000 per year.

Student initiatives helped fund the state-of-the-art thermal system. The 18-member Student Sustainability Committee, funded by the annual “Green Fee” assessed on students, allocated $375,000 — or about 13 percent of the system’s cost — to the facility’s geothermal installation.

The building has a number of other unique features. It contains two dozen new classrooms — one of the highest figures on campus — replete with active-learning and distance-learning spaces. In the fall, engineering courses will occupy most of the space, along with math, statistics and other technical classes.

The facility is also the first UI building funded through a public-private partnership, which allows for tax-exempt financing.

Meanwhile, faculty and graduate students will use temperature information from a 385-foot-deep monitoring well, funded by Facilities & Services and the Institute for Sustainability, Energy and Environment, for continued research opportunities. 

As part of the Illinois Climate Action Plan, the university plans to get to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Currently, around 12 percent of electricity is provided by renewable sources, like the solar and wind farms near campus, White said. But only 4.5 percent of the UI’s total energy use, counting thermal, comes from renewable sources.

“Clean electricity is important, but it’s not enough,” White said.

In the planning stages, the UI wasn’t supposed to start implementing geothermal systems until 2035, but a suggestion by Yu-Feng Forrest Lin of the Prairie Research Institute jump-started that process."

F&S submitted the Spring 2021 Semesterly Report to the SSC for the Solar Farm 2.0 Landscape Buffer project!

Read the report in the attached files below.

This year, we awarded 38 green certifications on our campus! Congratulations to all! This includes 28 events (including iSEE Congress and the “TED Talk: Eco Edition” series) seven Greek chapters (including gold-level awards for Delta Delta Delta, Pi Beta Phi, Delta Gamma, Kappa Delta, and Zeta Beta Tau), and three offices: International Student & Scholar Services, Department of Communication, and Department of Chemistry Administrative Office. Learn more about all of iSEE’s Certified Greener Campus programs.

Greek Chapter Gold Certifications:

• Pi Beta Phi — March 2021
• Delta Delta Delta — March 2021
• Delta Gamma — March 2021
• Kappa Delta — February 2021
• Zeta Beta Tau — November 2020

Greek Chapter Silver Certifications:

• Triangle Fraternity — November 2020 (Read more!)

Greek Chapter Bronze Certifications:

• Phi Sigma Sigma — February 2021 (Read more!)

Event Certifications:

• SECS iCAP Teach-In — Certified April 2021
• SECS Trivia and Happy Hour — Certified April 2021
• SECS Plant Parenthood Fundraiser — Certified April 2021
• SECS Roundtable with La Colectiva — Certified April 2021
• SECS Earth Day Climate Strike — Certified April 2021
• SECS Stargazing — Certified April 2021
• SECS Teach-In — Certified April 2021
• SECS Ecosociology Lecture & Discussion — Certified April 2021
• SECS Virtual Sustainable Cooking — Certified April 2021
• SECS Volunteering with Red Bison — Certified April 2021
• SECS “Plogging” 5k Fun Run — Certified April 2021
• SECS Painting Climate Strike Signs — Certified April 2021
• Illinois Solar Decathlon ADAPTHAUS Inauguration Event — Certified April 2021
• Campus Recreation Food Assistance & Well-Being Program Digital Food Drive — Certified April 2021
• iSEE Congress 2021: The Future of Water — Certified March 2021
• Champaign Park District/UIUC Bunny Brunch — Certified March 2021
• iSEE TED Talk: Eco-Edition Series — Certified March 2021
• Environmental Leadership Program (ELP) Environmental Policy Workshop — Certified March 2021
• ELP Corporate Sustainability Workshop — Certified March 2021
• SSC Coffee Hours — Certified March 2021
• RST/Don Moyer Boys and Girls Club Young Olympians Program — Certified March 2021
• One Winter Night Anniversary Plaza Donation Drive — Certified March 2021
• One Winter Night — Certified February 2021
• Parkland College Trivia Night, 3/24/2021 — Certified February 2021
• Illinois Extension Everyday Environment Webinar Series — Certified February 2021
• American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) general meeting series — Certified February 2021
• Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC) Sustainability Seminar Series — Certified December 2020
• ECEC21 (Emerging Contaminants in the Environment Conference 2021) — Certified December 2020

The Spring 2021 iSEE Quarterly Update (iQ) highlighted a diverse array of campus initiatives that made this year's Earth Month one to remember. Ranging from hosted events to sustainable energy, the article discusses the launch of the "TED Talk: Eco Edition" series, Solar Farm 2.0, community trash pickup, and more!

Read the article in the attached files below. 

https://fs.web.illinois.edu/Insider/2021/05/07/campus-connection/

The SSC approved a scope change for the Green Labs Intern project to allow the funding to be used for the larger Greener Campus program, and to revise the schedule to have an expiration date of June 30, 2023. The project contact is Meredith Moore at iSEE.