Business View Magazine - September 2015

26 Business View - September 2015 Business View - September 2015 27 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 that that building received,” she says. Cusker adds: “It’s a slow process. Every institution wants to quantify and track everything and it may take another four to five years to really have a kind of system in place that’s successful and that allows us to do that.” NAU’s comprehensive sustainability programs and initia- tives recently earned it a ranking of 37th Greenest School in America from Best Colleges.com, based on its Gold Star rating from The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE). Cusker elaborates upon the school’s high profile: “What makes us stand out is that we really are trying to look at sustain- ability in all areas - from how we operate as a campus, what we role-model for the next generation of students, and the many sorts of academic and extra-curricular op- portunities they have no matter what their major is. NAU is perhaps not at the top of the list for prestigious aca- demic institutions, but we have some really talented fac- ulty doing really great things around environmental and sustainability research and that strengthens the holistic approach that we take here. And we have a pretty diverse group of staff - dining, housing and residents’ life, facility services; we have a very good working partnership and it helps us move things along and do some really cool things.” And when it comes to green initiatives that foster sus- tainability and conserve the environment, “cool things” is precisely what we need. PREFERRED VENDORS Duncan Family Farms - www.duncanfamilyfarms.com Hardison-Downey Construction –www.hardisondowney. com 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. Students at NAU work far beyond campus to impact regional environmental campaigns. The student run Green Fund is the organization on cam- pus that allows great projects like the solar thermal air heating project come to fruition. clean & Green clean & Green