Making good progress on the four rows of solar at the Energy Farm.  Today, the AC power was officially turned on.  Nextracker is supposed to be onsite on Monday to commission the trackers.  That will allow Plant Science folks to till and plant crops.  After Monday, the next steps will be getting the DC wire management complete and connected to the inverters, so they can be inspected and then powered on.

Please see attached the list of avenues used to promote Bike for Earth Day 2025

March 2025 photos of the Florida Orchard Prairie have been added to the box folder.

The attached PDF contains performance metrics for ZipCar usage on campus for March 2025.

Karina Jang researched and conducted interviews with 7 universities, 5 from the US and 2 international, to understand their air travel emissions tracking and mitigation strategies. This report summarizes what she found and includes recommendations for the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign to start their air travel emission mitigation framework. 

On Thursday was another installment of our instructional class, which went well. Friday was our first Bike Center on the Quad event, which also went well. We also received our first end-of-semester/graduation donation.

We have a handful of bikes in the queue which we’ll finalize/safety check this week.

The numbers:

Visitors: 39
Sales: $327
Memberships: 6 for $180
Tires/tubes: 4 for $25

The iCAP Education Team met on Monday, April 7th from 4-5 pm via Teams. First we shared information about the upcoming events during Earth Month. Then we discussed project updates that team members had including AASHE stars data collection, sustainability language in course descriptions, progress towards a sustainability Gen-Ed requirement, a sustainability literacy assessment and outgoing survey, iSEE partnered internship opportunities, and sustainability integration into study abroad. We also discussed student team member ideas like the possibility of composting on campus. The meeting minutes are attached. 

This month, the Land and Water team had their monthly meeting on Friday, April 4, at 9:00 am on a Teams video call. Linked below is the meeting agenda with the meeting notes from what the team discussed. Additionally, a recording of the meeting is linked in the agenda. 

Sarthak notified Bird that leftover BikeShare bikes should be removed as soon as possible to avoid being impounded.

The Energy Team had their April meeting on Thursday, April 3rd, from 2:00 - 3:00 PM. The main discussion points included gathering contact information for building managers and finalizing interview questions for the Building Occupancy Pilot Program. The team also reviewed student availability and finalized email communications. Although the meeting was relatively short, significant progress was made. The meeting minutes are attached!

Attached is paper data from iBuy spanning FY15-24.

Here are the numbers for white paper that Central Stores has sold and the current price per ream (as of FY24). These ream numbers are from January 1 2022-December 31 2024:

0% - 25,858 reams $3.80 each

30% - 9,801 reams $6.98 each

100% - 389 reams $5.49 each (ream price cheaper than 30%, because the prices have not been updated in a few years as the 100% paper does not sell anymore)

Sarthak Prasad introduced Zach to the iCAP portal and showed him how to do project updates.

 iSEE seed-funded research project that uses robotics and artificial intelligence to autonomously manage “high tunnel” food production is entering its second year at the University of Illinois Sustainable Student Farm.

May 2024-February 2025 photos of the Florida Orchard Prairie have been added to the box folder.

Things are picking up and to meet demand, we’ll work on getting some more bikes for sale. We did have nice 3 speed Build-a-Bike finished this week. 

Hoped to have a few more bikes done this last week but all of the ones I safety checked failed and then some—damaged wheels/broken components—but such is the plight of repairing old bikes. 

Tonight is the Bike Project Monthly Members Meeting. 

This week is our first Bike Center on the Quad Day. Fingers crossed for good weather and a good turnout!

The numbers:

Visitors: 59
Sales: $328
Bikes (refurb): 1 for $150
Bikes (B-a-B): 1 for $50
Memberships: 2 for $60
Tires/tubes: 5 for $24
 

Attached is the 2025 Progress Report for the 2014 Campus Bike Plan. 

Please see the first 18 minutes on a recent broadcast on Japan national news this weekend about using groundwater and geothermal for snow melting in Japan.  The president of this company visited us several years ago.  

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/shows/2091047/

Yu-Feng Lin

--------------------

Illinois Water Resources Center: iwrc.illinois.edu <http://iwrc.illinois.edu/> Illinois State Geological Survey: www.isgs.illinois.edu <http://www.isgs.illinois.edu/> Prairie Research Institute: www.prairie.illinois.edu <http://www.prairie.illinois.edu/>

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign: www.illinois.edu <http://www.illinois.edu/>

RailSplitter Wind Farm provided the March 2025 Buyer's Share amounts by the hour, totaling 3,443.1 Megawatt hours.The March 2025 Buyer's Share Report is attached below.

Annual Campus Space Survey Opens May 5

The 2025 Campus Space Survey reporting period will be Monday, May 5, to Thursday, July 3. Once the survey opens, facility liaisons and business managers can complete the annual required inventory through the ARCHIBUS Web Central portal. Please update departmental floor plans and occupancy/room usage data to enable an efficient survey process. More Web Central user accounts may be requested.

May 5–July 3

Brett Thompson • Facilities & Services

 This opportunity is available online.