The Krannert Art Museum approached the Student Sustainability Committee with an immediate need to improve their lighting profile. This specific LED Lamp Retrofit project would switch from incandescent lamps to LED lamps in the Noel Gallery and the East Galleries. Given its variety of available lamps, its efficiency values, and its non-UV characteristics, LED lamps are an ideal solution for these galleries at Krannert Art Museum.

Energy shade curtains have many benefits for greenhouses including optimization of natural light reaching the crop canopy and reductions in heating inputs and electricity for cooling equipment and lighting. This is the 3rd phase of funding provided to the Plant Care Facility (Turner Hall Greenhouses) for curtain installation and programming, and 7 additional curtains were installed at a total cost of $71,000. Meters installed in rooms with and without curtains continue to track energy savings, and have shown an overall 50% heating use reduction, 30% electricity use reduction, and 30% water use reduction (for cooling) during fall and winter months.

The 2007 Solar Decathlon house is coming home to Champaign Urbana to a permanent foundation at the University Energy Farm. Funds have been secured for its transportation, placement on a permanent foundation, utility hook ups, and inspection of current systems to ensure safe working order. Funding from the Student Sustainability Committee will defray the costs of upgrading the systems and bringing the house up to code. To meet these goals, the solar array will need to be redesigned and reconstructed; the electrical, lighting, and HVAC systems will need to be updated; and new monitoring equipment will need to be installed. Ultimately, the goal of this project is to have a fully functioning net negative energy residential model home. Student groups are assuming the responsibility for all design, construction, and monitoring tasks as they are able.

The Campus Community Garden (CCG) will be designed by students, built, and planted on the grounds of the University of Illinois Turf Farm. The CCG will look and feel like a typical allotment-style community garden, but the management of the garden will be focused on undergraduate learning opportunities. To this end, half of the individual garden plots (24 raised beds) will be made available to students for independent gardening activities and experimentation. The other 24 raised bed garden plots will be used for teaching, demonstration, and outreach on urban agriculture, and they will also serve as important examples of successful production methods for student gardeners.

Allerton Park is a valuable but underutilized property owned by the University of Illinois. The Allerton Park Bike Share project intends to improve Allerton Park and make it more attractive to the campus population and the community at large through the installation of a bike share system. In addition to providing an attractive service for visitors, this project will also help promote green transportation when traveling around the 1,517 acre estate.

In 2011, students at faculty from the University of Illinois develop the Re_Home for the Solar Decathlon Competition. As a result of a new landscaping and beautification plan, the Re_Home has found a permanent place on campus. In maintaining a “sustainability ideology”, the landscaping plans for this project are geared toward sustainability with the use of native, low maintenance plants as well as vegetables, edible herbs, and fruit trees. The Re_Home is an exemplary embodiment of sustainability and its permanent home will serve as a showcase in sustainability education.

The new Electrical and Computer Engineering building (New ECE building) will be operational starting the fall semester of 2014, and will be a unique green building on the University of Illinois campus. It is designed to be the most energy efficient engineering building in the world and is targeting LEED platinum certification, the highest rating for efficiency. With the full planned solar energy complement, the building is projected to achieve net zero energy status. The facility will be one of the two largest net-zero energy buildings in the United States. It will be a facility that supports all its own energy needs – on average over each year – leaving no carbon or fossil consumption footprint. Although the ECE building design itself is intended to achieve LEED Platinum certification, the energy objectives go far beyond this rating to true energy sustainability.