Nov. 12, 2002

CU-BOULDER ENERGY CONSERVATION CAMPAIGN KICKS OFF THIS MONTH WITH THREE-PRONGED APPROACH

Contact: Robin Newsome-Suitts, (303) 492-7523
Moe Tabrizi, (303) 492-1425
Jeannine Malmsbury, (303) 492-3115

CU-BOULDER ENERGY CONSERVATION
CAMPAIGN KICKS OFF THIS MONTH
WITH THREE-PRONGED APPROACH

A campaign to make energy conservation part of everyday
campus routines is being targeted to students, faculty and staff at
the University of Colorado at Boulder this month with blue and
yellow stickers that remind energy users: "When not in use, turn off
the juice."
Fifteen thousand campus light switches will display the new
campaign slogan, designed by the CU Environmental Center. The
slogan is aimed at involving the entire CU-Boulder campus in an
effort to raise awareness of the benefits of conservation,
particularly when tight budgets have people looking for ways to
maximize money for the classroom.
The program is being spearheaded by Vice Chancellor for
Administration Paul Tabolt. "Lean budgetary times call for the
entire campus to be engaged in conserving resources," Tabolt said.
"In Regent Hall, we are disconnecting one bulb per two-bulb
lighting fixture. We are lowering hot water temperatures and
replacing incandescent bulbs with more efficient fluorescent bulbs.
And staff, faculty and students can help by reporting energy waste
to the energy conservation hotline at
energyconservationhotline@fm.colorado.edu," Tabolt said.
Robin Newsome-Suitts, chair of CU-Boulder's year-old Campus
Resource Conservation Committee, said the "Turn off the juice"
slogan and stickers are part of a three-pronged approach by the
committee to enlist everyone at CU-Boulder in the drive to save
energy.
"We know that it takes a significant investment of time and
capital to make the facilities improvements that bring about
savings," said Newsome-Suitts. "We can plan to make those
improvements in the future, but right now we need to change
behavior, which can actually bring about the most substantial
savings quickly."
Besides the "Turn off the juice" appeal, the campaign
features an Energy Conservation Hotline and a PC monitor sleep-mode
project to install the "sleep" feature on an estimated 18,000
computers used every day on campus.
The PC program alone is expected to save about $450,000
annually by enabling PC monitors to automatically go to sleep mode
when the user leaves the computer for more than 10 to 20 minutes,
said Moe Tabrizi, CU-Boulder's Energy Conservation Officer.
Information Technology Services and support personnel will change
the settings for monitors to go into the more efficient sleep mode
starting in November.
The goal is to complete the effort by the end of the year. To
speed up the project, technology staff members who complete the
conversion will be able to compete for a Palm Pilot, which will be
awarded to the employee who is the first to both convert all the PC
monitors in his or her purview and report the work to the Energy
Conservation Hotline.
The Energy Conservation Hotline -- (303) 735-6202 -- is
already taking ideas for new ways to save energy on campus and to
identify energy-wasting practices or equipment. The hotline has
elicited some good ideas already, said Tabrizi.
"The hotline is a mechanism to encourage people to report
energy waste that they see on campus and also to give us ideas on
new energy-saving projects that they encounter in their offices or
anywhere on campus," Tabrizi said. He will follow up on all
conservation suggestions and reports of problems.
But not all energy conservation problems are fixable in the
short term, Tabrizi said.
"This campus has a number of old buildings supported by older
and less efficient heating/cooling systems," he said. "Even so, we
hope these issues won't discourage people from reporting problems
and making suggestions on ways to save energy."
Results of the 'Turn off the juice" campaign will be tracked.
"We will begin to track the monthly building energy use and develop
usage charts for each building" to assist in the energy-cutting
effort, Tabrizi said.
Also, the "lights out" program will not be applied to areas
lighted for safety, such as corridors and stairwells, Tabrizi said.
"But in classrooms and offices that are not being used, the lights
should always be off."
The Campus Resources Conservation Committee began meeting in
2001 to consider conservation "as a way to be fiscally responsible
to our students and to the state by trying to save money on energy
costs to maximize funds for education," said Newsome-Suitts.
"Now the state budget crunch further legitimizes this effort
and justifies us doing even more to conserve than we had envisioned
when we first began our planning," she said.