Stakeholder Engagement

• Faculty
• Students
• Program staff
• Administrative staff
• IT staff
• Facilities staff
• Alumni
• The public

Yet each building and unit is made up of a different mix of these stakeholder groups, and priorities, knowledge levels, and energy needs run the gamut. The most successful units in the pilot were those that were able to bridge this gap between different stakeholders.

An example, perhaps not surprisingly, is Sue, the Director of Finance and Administration and head of the carbon charge at the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies (F&ES)’s Kroon Hall, which was put in the “redistribution” scheme. She took on the challenge, seeing the larger imperative of the experiment and formed a dedicated team of students to work on the project. The carbon charge was viewed as a platform to direct attention to the School’s ongoing work in managing the most energy-efficient building on campus. Despite being LEED Platinum-certified^[1], Kroon Hall’s energy consumptions had fluctuated above and below energy model predictions since its completion in 2009. The dedicated team, led by James Ball (a master’s student specializing in green buildings) and Sara Smiley Smith (a PhD student and coordinator of the Environmental Stewardship Committee and The Yale College Environmental Studies program), performed analysis of data from around 2,000 sensors around Kroon Hall^[2] to identify the main cause of excess energy consumption.

These measurements revealed that Kroon Hall’s energy consumption was especially high in the winter. It took as much as five hours for the system to warm up in the morning and reach the desirable temperatures at 9 am for the start of the day. After reviewing the data, the team found that this was due to a problem with air intake, in which the system was constantly bringing in cold air from the outside for ventilation. Three months later, Kroon Hall reconfigured the system with a winter warm-up mode, which recirculates indoor air and only brings in outdoor air when necessary. The action is expected to reduce Kroon Hall’s warm-up time from five to two hours.

A survey conducted in the spring of 2016 also found that more than 60% of staff members in Kroon Hall were dissatisfied with the thermal comfort in their offices. The carbon charge team experimented with installing thermal curtains and found that they lowered air temperature variation, warmed the surface temperature and improved comfort.

On the communications front, the team created a public Facebook page to share their research with the broader Yale community and engage their fellow F&ES students in energy reduction efforts. They posted Kroon Hall’s energy use data, called for students’ ideas for energy reduction, as well as shared videos of interviews with F&ES faculty about their views on the carbon charge. The active engagement and implementation of energy conservation measures helped Kroon Hall achieve a 17% reduction during the pilot term of December to May, despite being 5% above baseline for July through May of the same year. Kroon Hall’s experience shows that there are potential cost-effective solutions even in a LEED Platinum building.

Most importantly, the F&ES team emphasized the importance of connecting the carbon charge with the educational and research mission of Yale. James Ball, a Master’s student and Head of Carbon Charge Team (2015-2016) at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies commented:

You can reduce energy and still learn valuable lessons, or you can reduce energy and not learning anything from it. But in an academic institution, the learning has to be front and center. [...] The learning opportunities for F&ES are perhaps more than other schools, but the interesting thing is that energy use exists for everybody regardless of what their studies are.

Sara Smiley-Smith attributed the success of Kroon Hall to the enthusiasm and research efforts of students like James, rather than economic incentives: “We feel empowered by the students to act on the carbon charge.” F&ES also took leadership in engaging fellow participants in the pilot. Despite being placed in the zero-sum competition (“redistribution” scheme), Sue Wells convened a meeting with other building administrators in the same group to encourage the sharing of best practices and taking a collaborative approach to the carbon charge. Sue and others found that this practice of collaborating and uncovering best practices was the “fun part” of participating in the pilot program.

Other examples of stakeholder engagement include Pierson College and Jonathan Edwards College, two of Yale’s twelve residential halls. Pierson College worked to reduce unnecessary electricity and thermal use during winter and spring breaks. The College’s Operations Manager, Tanya Wiedeking, worked with the Head of College, Facilities Superintendent and several students to develop a checklist with a menu of energy-saving actions. Students who closed windows and adjusted radiators were eligible for a prize. The competition saw a nearly 50% participation rate. Jonathan Edwards College conducted a poll to survey students’ awareness and found that only half of the respondents knew how to operate the radiators in their rooms, which presented significant education and outreach opportunities.

The Allwin Hall experience reflected a different situation. The building is divided between two departments, and Pilot lead Ella Sandor had the challenge of reaching out to those outside of her unit to drive participation and results. Her office is in a different building, and both her physical presence and the building’s split use limited the sense of community engagement. She found that it was difficult to sustain promotion of the carbon charge beyond relaying information provided to her or asking building users to identify low-hanging fruit. The Baker Hall team had a similar experience due to shared occupancy. Yale Law School Associate Dean for Finance and Administration Joe Crosby said:

The Law School only occupies the 4th floor of Baker Hall and the remaining floors are used by the College for residential housing.  We did not control what happened in 75% of the building nor did we communicate anything to the students in the building.

Stakeholder engagement at times led to interesting outcomes. When the School of Arts wanted to increase studio hours during winter break, Jonathan Rohner, the Finance and Administration Manager, brought the extra energy and carbon charge costs to the Dean’s attention. As it was his final year in office, the Dean decided that the increased student productivity was worth the extra charges. While energy use increased, this is an example of how the carbon charge was used in decision-making. A higher carbon price in the future may or may not change this decision depending on the stakeholder’s cost-benefit calculation and perception.

^[1] Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) is a rating system devised by the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) to evaluate the environmental performance of a building and encourage market transformation towards sustainable design. LEED Platinum is the highest certification level for new construction.

^[2] Schick, F. (2014, April 19). F&ES leads carbon charge program. http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2016/04/19/fes-leads-carbon-charge-program/