120 Business View Magazine - May 2016
and become part of a larger community that mentors
their peers in specific behaviors that save energy. This
whole project came about as the brainchild of a lower-
level administrator - the Director of Utilities – but at the
same time, the initial phase of this project was paid for
by student money.” In addition, the university also has
a Coordinating Committee for Campus Sustainability,
or CoCoSus, which is made up of high level members
of the school’s administration and faculty. Its purpose
is to facilitate inter-departmental sustainability initia-
tives and further the university’s progress toward the
goal of carbon neutrality.
Another key objective of NAU’s sustainability programs
is to quantify the savings that investments in green ini-
tiatives can accrue. According to Henn, the school’s
years-long, $18 million retrofit project that covered
about 80 percent of the campus, targeting lighting
(since 2012, 12,000 light fixtures have been changed
out to CFL or LED lighting), water, and natural gas, is
projected to save the school some $1.5million per year
and $40 million over the life span of the project. But
those numbers are only projections based on models.
Megan Burke, NAU’s LEED Coordinator, discusses the
school’s aim to record specific data: “We’re starting
to lay the foundation down to get more quantifiable
information. We started a lot of tracking programs for
things like waste, or purchasing, and cleaning – things
of that nature - so we are starting to get more programs
together so we can actually show hard numbers; this is
what we’ve saved, this is a year’s worth of data.”
According to Burke, the Cline Library, which is slated
for LEED certification in 2016, will provide that type
of detailed information. “For the Cline Library, we will
be using energy data to see if the cost savings that
were estimated match up with what the meters cur-
rently show what we’re saving based on the retrofits
NAU’s student environmental club the Green Jacks work on multiple projects across campus. In this picture
they’re helping NAU Athletics recycle at home football tailgating events.
