Green Campus Cultivates LEED-ers in Energy Efficiency

At UC San Diego and UC Berkeley in California, Green Campus interns are leading school-wide efforts to combat wasted energy in buildings, which accounts for nearly 40 percent of total wasted energy and CO2 emissions. By working towards recognized green buildings requirements, the students are improving energy waste on campus one building at a time.

UC San Diego

Since the summer of 2008, UC San Diego (UCSD) Green Campus interns and other students and staff have been working hard to submit documentation that will make the Campus Services Complex the first UCSD building to receive certification by the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED). As the project nears completion, the Green Campus interns and nearly a dozen other students have turned to two new LEED certification projects: the campus Sustainability Resource Center (housed in the Price Center) and Sverdrup Hall (a laboratory building on the Scripps campus).

To ensure lessons learned on the first LEED project are not forgotten, the Campus Services Complex project team is working to make the LEED documentation easily accessible and writing a "LEED How-To Guide" that will serve to guide and inform future LEED projects on campus. Green Campus and others plan to apply lessons learned from the first LEED project to these two new LEED-EBOM and LEED-CI certifications, respectively, to ensure that the university's LEED teams can effectively reach out to building occupants, and green all aspects of building operations.

UC Berkeley

Green Campus interns at UC Berkeley are working closely with Sustainability Director Lisa McNeilly to continue plans for a Green Department certification standard that would be applied to departments in different buildings around the university. The team agreed to pilot the program in the HAAS School of Business, Environment, Health & Safety, and Residential Student Services Program buildings. Departments will earn points for sustainable attributes based on criteria the team puts together. The team determined the following mandatory requirements:

• A "Green Team" convened by each building that would meet at least once a semester and develop a plan of action.
• Recycling bins on each floor
• Development of an individual behavior program and pledge
• Use of post consumer paper

Departments can also earn extra points for particularly innovative ideas of their own. Green Campus will develop a checklist of energy components required for the certification and the pilot phase of the certification process will begin next month. They hope that this Green Department certification will empower teams on campus to take ownership of their own sustainability for years to come.