Princeton University
OP-3: Building Operations and Maintenance

N/A

The Building Services department will utilize Green Seal-certified cleaners and/or Electrically Activated Water for all daily use cleaning products. Further, the department will expand processes for refinishing floors without the use of conventional floor stripper. All restroom hand soap throughout the University is Green Seal-certified. At this time, the University’s primary disinfectants are not Green Seal certified.

The University sets goals and objectives for resource conservation via the campus planning effort as well as annual reporting through the Office of Sustainability. The Princeton University Facilities organization works aggressively to reduce the amount of energy used by the campus. Facilities works to design, operate and maintain energy systems and processes that meet or exceed the sustainability goals of the University. The energy management plan is not a single project, but a strategic and tactical effort consisting of many individual projects, both long and short-term. Initiatives include energy auditing/screening, energy metering projects, energy management projects, maintenance projects, construction projects, and operational refinements. Working in tandem with the Princeton Energy Plant, the implementation and continuous refinement of the energy management plan have had a very positive impact on Princeton's carbon footprint. As a result, the University is on track to meet its goal of reducing absolute campus greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

The following strategies are used to assess performance, implement action plans and evaluate progress toward this goal:

Princeton University uses a real-time dashboard on energy production and usage to allow operators in the energy management control room to monitor and manage about 180,000 data points representing temperature, humidity, airflow, etc., around the campus buildings. They are constantly scrubbing the data to find problems and opportunities to reduce total energy use. There is also a minimum of three people in the energy plant 24/7/365 monitoring and managing safety, compliance, reliability, economic and environmental performance of the plant. Similar to the building energy management operators, they are continuously looking for opportunities to improve performance in one or more of those areas.

Princeton University’s Campus Energy and Engineering team also maintains a dispatch system that performs calculations to estimate current campus emissions and ideal emissions based on current plant demands. The estimated emissions are broken down into emissions associated with: boilers, chillers, cogeneration, and imported power. Data is shown on various time-scales: instantaneous, 24-hour, month, and year and are displayed along with the University’s total emissions target. The plant operators can then adjust operations to try to meet or beat these goals. The system is also used to inform energy management decisions based on relative prices between operation of the campus cogeneration plant and the regional electrical grid.

This data and information on energy production, usage, and emissions is compiled annually into administrative reports to evaluate year-to-year progress toward the greenhouse gas emission goal.

Another aspect of the energy management plan is to support the academic mission of the University by maintaining critical environmental conditions required by special systems on campus (e.g., laboratories, rare books, animal facilities, cleanrooms), as well as maintaining comfortable and healthy indoor air quality. The quality and quantity of lighting in academic and other spaces plays important role as well.

The University’s water management program consists of setting goals and objectives for resource conservation via the campus planning effort as well as annual reporting through the Office of Sustainability. The University works on evaluating and rolling out water saving initiatives on a campus wide basis as well as setting project specific goals.

Under the 2008 Sustainability Plan, the University set a goal to reduce overall campus water usage by 25% between 2006 and 2020. To date, overall annual campus water usage has declined by 15% since 2006 by implementing a water management plan that consists of many individual projects, both long and short-term. To-date these initiatives have included: campus-wide installations of low-flow fixtures, more efficient dishwaters and clothes washers, tray-free dining in dining halls, and athletic irrigation systems.

The following strategies are used to assess performance, implement action plans and evaluate progress toward this goal:

• Water usage is tracked on a monthly basis from data collected from submeters installed in campus buildings, as well as the campus energy plant. Princeton’s Facilities Finance and Administrative Services (FFAS) department regularly audits the monthly data for abnormal usage. If abnormal usage is detected for 3 consecutive months, FFAS will contact the University’s plumbing shop and New Jersey American Water (NJAW) to troubleshoot the issue and determine if the meter needs to be replaced. This process helps detect pipe leakages or a meter calibration issue. If the meter is mis-calibrated, the meter is replaced and then closely monitored to insure proper operation. Once the data is verified and corrected for any misreads, it is compiled annually to evaluate year-to-year progress toward the campus water usage goal and to identify additional opportunities for improvement
• Princeton’s Campus Energy and Engineering team separately tracks and monitors city and well water use in the Princeton cogeneration plant via hand-written readings as this data passes through various processes in the plant (cooling towers, boiler make-up, and gas-turbine emissions control). As part of the University’s water chemistry program, the team uses this data to track boiler “cycles” and cooling tower “cycles” to see how efficiently the plant uses water. The team will then adjust various aspects of the plant’s water chemical use to minimize total water use and chemical discharge. Some of these adjustments occur on a daily basis, while others occur on a weekly basis. The team also reviews the results with an outside chemist, a water chemical provider, and with plant management on a quarterly basis and will make adjustments to the program as needed.

Additional Links:
Green Cleaning protocol: https://facilities.princeton.edu/sustainable-campus/sustainable-practices
Energy management program:
https://facilities.princeton.edu/news/campus-energy-management
https://facilities.princeton.edu/sustainable-campus/sustainable-energy

Water management program:
https://facilities.princeton.edu/sustainable-campus/sustainable-buildings
https://sustain.princeton.edu/progress/water

EHS Indoor Air Quality (additional details): https://ehs.princeton.edu/environmental-programs/indoor-air-quality

Princeton University operates and maintains buildings as they relate to internal guidelines, and does not certify buildings for operations and maintenance.

The 15% reduction in campus water usage has occurred even with the tracking of additional properties since 2006.