Ohio University Greenhouse Gas Inventory

Reposting Results from Fall's GHG Inventory Seminar

2008-01-13T21:32:00.000-05:00

Greetings, GHG-Inventory-Minded Students-

Here at the start of Winter 2008 quarter - I'd like to repost the Wiki webpage where the data from the Fall ES692 Seminar Course "OU's Greenhouse Gas Inventory" are archived:

http://ohioghgseminar.pbwiki.com/

At this site you will find the results of teams of students in the following categories:

OUBuildings_OU_GHGInventory

Transportation_OU_GHGInventory

SolidWaste_OU_GHGInventory

Fertilizer_OU_GHGInventory

Population Data_ohioghgseminar

Solutions_OU_GHGInventory

-- Dr. Kim Brown

Info from other schools...

2007-11-29T11:48:00.000-05:00

http://green.msn.com/galleries/photos/photos.aspx?gid=134&GT1=10628

Green office

2007-11-15T15:21:00.000-05:00

Here's a good article I just found on energy efficiency in the office. It has lots of stuff on Energy Star and how to reduce your computer's carbon footprint.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9045738&pageNumber=1

Air Travel Findings

2007-11-05T13:33:00.000-05:00

After going through the flights for 1998 I was able to average the number of miles flown per flight (2478 mi). Using this number I estimated the number of miles flown for the remaining years based on the number of flights. Here were my findings:

Year .........No. Flights................Miles Flown

1998 1999	593 1992	1,469,454 4,936,202
2000	2773	6,871,530
2001	3937	9,755,937
2002	3775	9,354,499
2003	4356	10,794,224
2004	4783	11,852,336
2005	4938	12,236,428
2006	4975	12,328,114

The University of New Hampshire (UNH) did not have access to the information that we did, and when they did their final report they did not include specific air travel numbers but came up with an estimation using a hypothetical scenario: If every faculty and staff member flew to Los Angeles, round trip, once a year.

I think that it is important that we take advantage of the data that we do have, albeit strenuous and stressful, to come up with more accurate estimates.

Data quality

2007-11-05T11:09:00.000-05:00

I'm never sure how much estimating to do. This morning Ed Newman gave me tons of landfill trash projected from refuse contracts going back to 1973. The data points are for years the contracts were started, and do not include minor re-negotiations in the intervening years. For the Calculator I will place any missing years as the average of the years on either side. Landfill tonnage numbers since 2003 have been going up a lot, and Ed tells me that "around then" they started weighing the trash rather than estimating from volume.

There are dozens of different things that Campus Recycling collects and keeps out of the landfill (fluorescent bulbs, CFC gas, construction and development scrap, motor oil, toner cartridges, campus envelopes, etc) and they add more categories to that list each year. But what notes there are on quantities are in different units for each item (boxes of envelopes, crates of styrofoam, pickup trucks of reuseables) that I don't know how to convert to tons or cubic yards for comparison to trash. Ed showed me a conversion chart for items I'm willing to estimate. Still, data collection on that has been a lower priority than ITEM collection, and I'm missing data most years for everything not picked up by Athens Recycling. For the report I'll highlight a subset of years with relatively complete data and explain that there are probably similar numbers for other years. Doesn't change the Calculator tallies any, just how good we look.

Looking further into the calculator I found a column for Compost in the Offsets category! Compost just got much higher on my priority list, and will be a bigger part of my presentation.

Calculations on out of state commuting, and international student air miles

2007-11-04T12:10:00.000-05:00

Matt - That is amazing. Good job!

RE: out of state students:
For states adjacent to Ohio, I think it is fair to assume these student will be driving back and forth. I would pick a major/central city in each state and estimate drive miles * the number of students from that state. Then apply the same assumption (4 trips home/year)

eg INDIANA = RT Indianapolis miles to Athens* 4*# of students from IN
PENN = RT Pittsburgh miles to Athens* 4* # students from PA
KY = RT Lexington miles to Athens* 4* # students from KY

RE: Foreign students.
My gut feeling here is that these international student numbers should be given to Samantha Williams from our class (sw223407@ohiou.edu). I am cc-ing her here.

We have a lot of students from Africa, East Asia, India [in addition to a lot of other places]. For many of these students - they come here and *might* be able to visit home once or twice during the course of their studies.

What I would recommend is to estimate that each international student will fly the equivalent of a RT to Paris every year. That will over estimate for some, and wildly underestimate for others (China, Japan, African continent, etc). It's a start.

Using this URL = http://www.webflyer.com/travel/milemarker/
. . . ROUND TRIP Air Miles . . .
CMH - JFK = 962 miles (1548 km)
JFK = CDG (Paris) = 8060 miles (12980 km)

So these data would be plugged into the student air travel part of the Carbon Campus Calculator (via Samantha's section).

Just to be consistent I am going to paste this email into the blog, so that we can have a record of this collaboration.

--KJB

Quoting ma236805@ohio.edu:

> Hi Dr. Brown,
>
> I got the In-state stuff typed into a spreadsheet and calculated the
> distance that everyone(from Ohio) travels to get here based on 4 trips back
> and forth each year. I used GIS to estimate distance from the center of each
> county. The total came out to be over 16,000,000 miles!And that doesn't even
> count the 3,000 out-of-state and foreign students. Any ideas on how / if I should do
> those? The 1056 foreign students will be especially difficult because they're
> home countries are not given in this info.
>
> Thanks again for your help getting this info. It isn't what I had in
> mind when I volunteered to do the commuter mileage, but you were right, it is
> better than nothing.
>
> -Matt

Kim J. Brown, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
[ecophysiology & ecosystem function]
Dept. of Environmental and Plant Biology
Ohio University, Athens OH 45701

Lab = http://ecophys.plantbio.ohiou.edu/index.html
Dept = http://www.plantbio.ohiou.edu

Dr. Brown's work this week on Commuter data

2007-11-04T11:56:00.000-05:00

This week I was doing some work to assist Matt Alden in his project - estimating how many miles commuted by faculty/students/staff.

Matt's first (and most direct attempt) was to obtain records from Transportation services as to who has parking hang tags - this seemed to be the most direct way of learning who is driving to campus. Those data are only available as hardcopy data - about 18,000 pieces of paper - that no one has time to type in manually.

The next step was Matt talking to someone in Institutional Research to track down zip codes associated with each faculty/staff person. The idea was that Matt would use zip code data to estimate driving distance. They told Matt they don't have zip code data.

Wed 31 Oct I visited the Institutional Research office and they provided data from the OU factbook that has a distribution of #s of students from each county of Ohio. In addition there is a list of # of students from the other 49 states, as well as a tally of international students.

Fri 2 Nov I visited Carlotta Hensler (hensler@ohio.edu) in the Human Resources office to ask for fac/staff zip code data by year. She agreed that it would be a simple request and that these data would be provided by the HR analyst Steve Madden (maddens@ohio.edu).
These data should be emailed on Monday 5 Nov. --KJB

Update of the University Fleet

2007-11-03T17:57:00.000-04:00

Marty Paulins at Parking Services sent 2 files, one with odometer readings and license plates, the other with make, model, year the vehicle was purchased by OU, cost, etc and license plate information. My idea was to cross reference the license plate information, calculate the average MPG of the vehicles, divide by vehicles and get a number for the calculator. I'm not sure why I thought it would be this easy, but regardless I was wrong. When I cross referenced the plate numbers, some cars from both sides are missing. I asked Marty about this and here is his response:

They were sold - as they age or departments decide to get rid of them -
they are transferred over to moving & storage services and sold at public
auction.

On the other email - LTD = Life to Date

On the other question - a department could purchase a vehicle in 1999 on
their own - the only thing we would do is do the yearly insurance and tag
requirments - Transportation Services would not see that vehicle again
because we are not a centralized fleet - the departments do not have to
bring their vehicles to our garage for maintenance (once again because we
are not a centralized fleet) - what probably happened in 2004 is they did
bring it to our garage for some reason, and then it would go into our
maintenance software - at that time the miles, etc would be entered into
our maintenance software.

I think the last one was term years - that should only pertain to leased
vehicles - number of years the vehicle was under lease.

Let me know if you need anything else - thanks - marty

In a nut shell, this means I have no way of knowing when cars were bought or sold without going through massive amounts of paper data. It also means that i have no way of even knowing if the information Marty gave me will provide accurate numbers. I am going to go through the data again to see if I can make any logical conclusions about miles traveled by the University Fleet per year.

See you all on Monday,
Sarah

Ping Energy

2007-11-02T13:00:00.001-04:00

I was wondering if anybody could provide me with the kWh per month or year that Ping Center uses?

a plague on paper filing

2007-11-02T11:54:00.000-04:00

I called Athens Hocking Recycling center a few days back and asked for garbage data. The lady who keeps those records is early morning shift, so I had to call back before 3:30pm. She explained that the data I wanted was somewhere in a waist-high stack of paper with the rest of their paper receipts, and that there were no computer records to access. She could maybe find some answers for me in 6 months or so.

Happliy most of what I needed was in another file Ed Newman sent me. It took some deciphering from pages of jumbled notes, but it was a Word document and therefor searchable. Nearly good to go now.

Natural Gas Vehicles

2007-11-01T20:45:00.000-04:00

While looking for MPG for various university vehicles, I came across some numbers comparing MPG for Natural Gas Vehicles to Unleaded Vehicles (something like 34 MPG for N.G. vs 9 for Unleaded.

Does anyone know how / where to refuel Natural Gas vehicles?

The end result will (hopefully) be a comparison of CO2 and $ saved by switching a small number of cars on the fleet to N.G.

Thanks,
Sarah

Wiki notes

2007-10-31T19:31:00.000-04:00

I was poking at the Wiki page today and I found a few features.

If you DON'T want to get notifications every time I change the font on my page:
Log in and go to the Settings link at the top.
Find the link on the left that says Notifications.
Take your name off the list.

There is a Files option with 10MB of storage. We could put the Carbon Calculator here where we can all access it, using 3-4MB of that storage. Any images or graphs we use on our pages are also going to come out of that 10MB, so we may need to keep an eye on the size of our files. Should we post the Calculator for just a day or two next week so we can all add our data to a common file? Maybe after the presentations so we can incorporate any suggestions? Or is it possible to post just the input sheet so we can past things into our own files? Thoughts?

2007-10-31T10:07:00.000-04:00

Hey guys,

So I looked at Ron's email and Gabe was right, that was the price to switch solely to coal (not what we want!). I emailed him again and it would be more that 5 million dollars to switch to all natural gas. So I will look at other rations to decrease GHG while still using some coal--ouch!

Here is what the email said:

The $101,400 refers to replacing the natural gas we actually used with coal. To reverse this - e.g. switching from coal and natural gas to all gas would be a lot more expensive. To replace the 25,863 tons of coal would require 542,592 MCF of natural gas at current unit price of $10.98 per MCF or $5,957,660!Our actual energy cost for steam was $1,937,974 (coal $1,468,492, natural gas $469,482). To produce it all with coal would be $1,569,892 (coal $1,468,492 + equivalent coal for gas $101,400). To produce it all with natural gas it would be $6,427,142 (natural gas $469,482 + equivalent gas for coal $5,957,660)

As you can see, the total cost is about 3.3 times the original cost and why such a radical shift in the fuel used for steam production is such a huge economic decision!

New method to display the cost of electricity use

2007-10-30T17:06:00.000-04:00

Hi everybody,

Just wanted to let you know that our team devised another method to display the cost of electricity use in campus buildings. This is intended to help those who don't grasp the true meaning of MMBTU consumption understand the relationship between OU's electrcity consumption and each building's efficiency/consumption habits.

Assuming OU's current electrical rate is $.04/kWh (as provided by Ron Chapman), I multiplied the kWh totals for each building (on South Green at least) by $.04 to get the total amount spent in the FY(06-07).

Next, to show how each building's electrical efficiency and use habits affect the cost, I divided the total amount of money spent for each building by its GROSS square footage to illustrate $$ spent/SQFT in the 06-07 fiscal year. This seemed to correspond wonderfully with the MMBTU's / SQFT I wrote about the other day.

If you have any suggestions on how this method could be improved or modified, please let me know.

Thanks.
Drew

Air Travel Changes

2007-10-30T17:04:00.000-04:00

THIS WAS A MISTAKE:
In a previous blog I mentioned analyzing the travel data by looking at the first and last fiscal years.
I thought that I had detailed notes (who, where, why) for 2006 (making it the last fiscal year) however the last full fiscal year that has detailed notes is 2002.

WE DO HAVE DETAILED NOTES FOR ALL THE YEARS (not all the flights)
THE NOTES ARE BROKEN UP INTO TWO SPREADSHEETS ON THE DISC PROVIDED BY RON

Also even with the notes, there are still a number of flights that do not provide locations, or are not listed on the "Notes" spreadsheet that was given to me.

The deeper I go into these spreadsheets the more problems seem to come up.

Final word on the landfill

2007-10-30T13:41:00.000-04:00

I called them back, figuring that whoever picked up the phone would know the answer. I was right - there is no methane recovery. Not at all surprising, but nice to have it confirmed. Handily all the data is already in short tons, so all I have to do is enter it to the calculator and get numbers for the missing years.

Thoughts for the Future

2007-10-30T12:18:00.000-04:00

While brainstorming with Sarah and Matt A. about what we are doing and what the next steps should be of our efforts, I thought of an idea. If the University wants to take this commitment seriously and continue to inventory our green house gas emissions (which it should) then standards need to be in place in the departments where we are gathering the data. The GHG Inventory needs to be one of "T's" crossed and "I's" dotted for each department. So that when whoever is put in charge of that years inventory, the information will be there. I think that this would be key in maintaining our efforts for the future.

Solutions update

2007-10-29T21:23:00.000-04:00

Just an update on the solutions progress: we have approximately 200 responses on the surveys and will keep collecting data until the end of this week. This will make for a good pilot study and I definitely think we should refine the questions and I can send it out again to faculty, staff, and students next quarter.

I heard back from Third Sun (solar and wind energy) as to what they could possibly implement at OU and how much it costs. This is a PDF though so I can bring it too class.

Additionally, I heard more from Ron regarding some specific questions we had about the univeristy's current system. Here are the relevant questions and his responses:

1. Do you have dollar figures as to how much the residence challenge saved the college, how much it cost to implement and how much it reduced energy consumption?

The Residence Challenge saved us $5256.96 in water, $4183.77 in electric and 106.6 tons of CO2. No figures were kept on actual costs. Actual KGAL water was 685,000 gallons and 96,917 kWh of electric.

2. Is the university set up for natural gas heating? If so, do you know how much more it would cost to switch from natural gas to coal?

Question is a little ambiguous. We heat primarily with steam produced by Coal and Natural gas in a 88% coal and 12% natural gas ratio at the heating plant. Coal is $53.00 per ton and natural gas is presently $10.98 per MCF. Cost per MMBTU is 4.63:1 (gas to coal). We used 25,863 tons of coal and 376,652 CCF of natural gas at the heating plant. The coal cost was $1,468,492 and the natural gas cost us $469,482 Replacing the natural gas MMBTU with coal is only 21.6% the cost! the natural gas could be replaced with coal costing about $101,400.

3. Are our buildings set up with thermostats that we potentially could lower a degree or two in the winter and raise in the summer?

Some are, a lot are centrally controlled and we exercise control over the temperatures remotely. A lot of the buildings, primarily the residence halls have no thermostats for heating and are zone controlled. We have much difficulty regulating the temps in these buildings. Also, individual controls on window A/C's are difficult for us to dictate control!

4. Are there any buildings that would function with passive solar heating and/or could we potentially have solar water heating?

Anything is possible. Solar heating in our region of the US dictates a redundant back up so it results in a higher first cost. To my knowledge, no life-cycle costing has been done on solar heating. It was initially considered for the natatorium I'm told but was discounted due to high need for heat in the winter with low sun hours and a concern as to how to reject all the heat in the summer time when the heat was not needed as much. It is something that bears additional investigation.

See you in class

Further progress on building data

2007-10-29T18:14:00.000-04:00

Hi everyone,

Just wanted to let you know that I added another column to our "Building Energy Use" spreadsheet.

The additional column is "MMBTU's / square foot" for electricity only.

Given what we all discussed, additional columns can be added for water, natural gas and steam once the meters are installed.

I figured it would be good to calculate the energy use (for electricity) per square foot using the GROSS sq. footage numbers, considering that would account for all the additional energy that's inadvertently used because of the gaps in the walls etc., although I'm also open to using the NET sq. footage numbers too.

(For those of you not familiar with the difference between GROSS and NET square feet, GROSS indicates the total square footage of the building footprint, whereas NET stands for all the usable space (excluding interior walls, gaps, voids etc.).

What do you think?

comming together

2007-10-29T11:45:00.000-04:00

i met with gabe last friday and she was able to give me some information concerning the actuall area of each of the fields. i have finally heard a reply from david hamill, but i still have to wait for his answere. this is so frustrating, i just want to know how much fertilizer we have used. is that such a big deal?

anyway...i should have all of it together soon, im excited. ill se everybody tomorrow in class.
josh

Baker Escalators

2007-10-26T16:45:00.000-04:00

After getting no response from anyone in the Baker Center about the escalators I decided to call the KONE elevator and escalator company to see if I could find anything out there. I talked to Rick Baretta who originally could only give me the technical specifications of the escalator. But, he then offered to talk to some engineers to see if they could figure out what the kW usage would be. Long story short, one empty escalator uses 2.2 kW as it runs per hour. A full escalator, which would mean completely full with a person on each step, runs at 7.5 kW per hour. Rick said that escalators almost never run completely full so a good estimate would be in the 5 kW range.

To calculate the usage you would have to find out how long the escalators run, during what hours people actually ride them, and how many people ride them during those busy hours.

The escalators used by the Baker Center are the KONE Eco3000. Rick said that the engineers are working on a Ecostart after market device that can be retrofitted onto existing escalators. This device will supposedly reduce electricity usage by 30% for the escalators.

By my calculations a completely empty escalator running 24/7, 365 days a year would cost $4,625 a year. The escalators are never completely empty so the number would in fact be higher. But the university is paying at least this much.

Building consumption

2007-10-25T18:01:00.000-04:00

Hey all,

The solution group was wondering if anybody had data on how much electricity each individual building intakes. We thought that somebody was doing this or that it was around somewhere but we can't find it.

Thanks

Commuter / Faculty Parking Permit Data

2007-10-25T15:23:00.000-04:00

This afternoon I spoke with Serena McCollum at the Office of Institutional Research about my project and the problems I was having obtaining electronic data. She said that they had no way of creating such a spreadsheet. While they do have a database with student names and addresses, they had no way of telling if they commute or if they live at an Athens residence.

Avionics Program - in the GHG Inventory?

2007-10-25T10:38:00.000-04:00

Dear Class -

I had one of those head-slapping moments the other day.

Is anyone looking into the Avionics GHG footprint? http://www.ohio.edu/avionics/aircraft/index.cfm

If yes, please respond to my blog and mention it in class next week.
Thanks! --KJB

kill-a-watts worked well

2007-10-25T00:43:00.000-04:00

I haven't got a chance to disseminate surveys at Baker due to my full schedule of classes, exams and papers. But I've sent the online survey link out to my grad classmates, so if they reply, Nicole should have got them.
At the same time, as Dr Brown suggested, I am doing a micro-examination on the four graphics labs I am supervising about the power use and student behavior. I used the kill-a-watts tonight to find out how much electricity a computer uses and found out it actually consumes almost the same amount of electicity with people using it or simply leaving it running. I have been documenting my lab student's behavior of using computers, so I believe I will be able to add something interesting in the report.
I have also made an appointment with Sonia to talk about a computer educational program her office is going to launch.
So, go go everyone!

2007-10-24T08:26:00.000-04:00

The data collection is going well--we have about 100 people so far. I was wondering if anyone was going to look into how much we would have saved had we used LEED standards on our new buildings. This was on our list of solutions, but if someone else is looking in to that, we wont double up.

presentations

2007-10-23T21:03:00.001-04:00

i just heard from kimthe prez and the provost will be attending our presentations. cool. hopefully we can get some local media reps and some student based organizations to attend too!

Surveys

2007-10-22T21:22:00.000-04:00

I passed out the surveys to my cluster class and business fraternity. Overall looking at how much people would pay for green energy was quite interesting. I just browsed through as we are still working on compiling the data, but people where willing to spend up to $500 dollars in some cases. Although there was also a lot of people who didn't want to pay any money at all.

Also we are working on putting together some ideas for an educational program

I am also working on trying to figure out how long would be the pay back period to install solar panels to some degree on an existing building.

Late but not least I think it would be a great idea for us to do something in our presentation that would get the audience involved or at least get more of their attention then a normal presentation.

"Are you a Good Landfill, or a Bad Landfill?"

2007-10-22T20:19:00.000-04:00

Today after another answering machine plea, Mark-the-Engineer of the landfill called me back. Our trash goes to a "Sanitary Landfill" which means it is compacted rather than incinerated, and isolated from the water table. I unfortunately forgot to ask about methane reclamation, but this is usually used in cities where the capped landfill may be used as an industrial park or golf course. I'll start entering my data into the calculator to see what it looks like, and I'll call back to verify that there is no methane recovery.

As for the missing data - for landfill-bound trash I have 4 recent years of the coveted 18 - the landfill records the tonnage by the hauling company, not by the source. I believe our hauling company is Athens/Hocking Recycling Center, but I'll have to check my notes and maybe call Ed Newman back. If I provide the landfill with a hauling company, they can give me annual tonnage brought by them. That hauling company would be another data source possibility. Recycling data on the other hand is far more complete.

Faculty / Commuter Permits...

2007-10-22T14:26:00.000-04:00

This morning I was contacted by Teresa at Parking Services about my request for commuter and faculty parking permits. They have records from the previous three years only, because they are not required to keep them for more than three years. Furthermore, the only available records of the addresses to which the permits were issued are on individual sales receipts and not in any electronic form. I went down to the Parking Services office to go through the permits. However, there are roughly 3,000 commuter permits and 2,500-3,400 faculty permits for each year. This figure includes permits that are given as replacements for ones that are lost or stolen. I'm not entirely sure about where to go from here. I am considering going through a portion of the permits to get a sample of the data, but I'm not sure how many would represent an adequate sample.

2007-10-22T10:27:00.001-04:00

Here is the email Marty from Parking Services sent earlier this morning.

Hi Sarah,
>
> Attached are 2 files we have on computer that will give you 05 miles & 06 miles and make of vehicle (you'll have to match the 29- numbers - license tags to 05 data) - we found everything else - but it is in boxes and on paper back to 2002, which you are more than welcome to go thru - some of the vehicles we don't have mileage on because we are not a centralized fleet - please let me know if you need anything else.
>
> thanks - marty
>
> Marty Paulins
> Director Transportation & Parking Services
> Ohio University
> 100 Factory Street / University Garage
> Athens, OH 45701
> PH : 740-597-1586
> FX : 740-593-9608
> email : paulinsm@ohio.edu

Master of Science in Environmental Studies

Student survey

2007-10-20T15:40:00.000-04:00

The IRB is in, so soon we will be collecting data from the students. Information on student "green" fees, air travel, commuter travel, beliefs in global warming, computer use, and similar topics will be collected from students in the business and psychology departments, business frat, and various individuals around campus. We will keep the transportation people posted!

Plan for Travel Data

2007-10-19T18:42:00.000-04:00

Yesterday in class Kim, Josh, Sarah and I took a look at the travel data and came up with a plan of attack for analysis.

The first full FY of data is 1998 and the most recent is 2006. I am going to focus on these two years to determine:

how many people flew
where they went (how many miles)

With these I am going to plot out miles flown per person for those two years, and then determine how many people flew for the years in between and make assumptions from there.

Most other schools did not have hard data for their air travel and they just made general hypotheses for calculating the air travel. I think this is the best way to utilize the data that we have in the time we have for the class.

Samantha

Carbon Offsets

2007-10-19T11:15:00.001-04:00

Hey All,

My friend Courtney started a tree planting club last year through the University. In total they planted 1400 pine saplings and this November they are planting roughly 20+ trees behind White's Mill.

Josh, can we use this as part of our offsets?

~Sarah

2007-10-18T20:00:00.000-04:00

Our building group added up electric & AEP kilowatt hours for fiscal years 2001-2007. (this information can be used in the carbon calculator) . FYI, we are using the standard conversion:1 kwh =0.003412128 MMBtu.
Also Matt is emailing Ron Chapman about electric meter codes (ie OHP NHP, OHP 2 ect).
I also met with Sonia on Monday. We thought it might be helpful to have GHG emissions avoided from building renovations (calculated from dollar savings from renovated buildings). Looking at the University of New Hampshire GHG inventory emissions based on primary fuel saved at the generating plant. I am unsure of how data was converted, especially with the fuel mix, so I hope to contact someone from UNH soon on their calculations.
leah

Google Document

2007-10-18T19:43:00.000-04:00

Here is the link for the Google Document that our group, the building group, has been working on. GHG Worksheet Our data is going to this one document that we can all edit.

Population Data

2007-10-18T16:39:00.000-04:00

I have accumulated all the data on full-time, part-time and summer school students thanks to Serena McCollum in Institutional Research and all the data on the faculty and staff thanks to Liz Bennett in Institutional Research. Student data for the years 1990 thru 1998 was available from notebooks stored in the Institutional Research office and data for the years 1998 thru 2007 from the Institutional Research website (Student Data tab//Student Enrollment/Degree Reports//Quarterly Enrollment Stats). I used the ATHENS(00) sections of the report as this is the main campus. Other data in the Athens reports include Continuing Education (10), Proctorville (33), Pickerington (34) and Hong Kong (99) . Serena assured me that Proctorville , Pickerington and Hong Kong students were on those campuses and not in Athens. My only concern was Continuing Education (10) - were those students physically on the Athens campus? Serena didn't believe that they were on campus and directed me to the Lifetime Learning group in Haning Hall. I spoke first with Karen Pidcock of Independent & Distance Learning. She explained that distance learning had been available in some form for the last 80 years. She was sure that anyone who took the Distance Learning was already counted in the (00) data. She directed me to Pam Brown, Director of Summer Sessions. Pam was sure that students in the (10) category were not physically on the campus. She believed that the numbers in the (00) category covered all the students on Athens campus. To check the theory would require that she go through all the call numbers and compare them with class rosters - a lot of work on her part that probably wouldn't result in different numbers. So, I deferred to the people with the experience and used (00) data.

As soon as the excel file is available on Blackboard, I will copy and paste the data.

Pam Callahan

2007-10-18T14:37:00.000-04:00

hello,
i just got out of a meeting with Pamella Callahan and she let me know pretty much all of the information a person could want to know about the development and timing of the athletic fields and the campus parks.

im still waiting to hear from Dave about a couple of questions. i think im going to try to arrange a meeting with him sometime next week. ive spoken with him a couple of times over the phone, i may as well introduce myself.

josh

Landfill Data

2007-10-18T13:46:00.000-04:00

Our trash goes to the Athens-Hocking Reclamation Center in Nelsonville, run by Kilbargers Construction. I called them up a few days ago to find out more, but the guy who answered had trucks waiting and didn't have time for questions. Instead he suggested I call Mark the Engineer, which I did. I left a clear message mentioning the GHG inventory and the Office of Sustainability, and asked him to return my call. I've called back since, but so far have not reached Mark. I'll keep calling.

Visit with Parking Services

2007-10-18T12:50:00.000-04:00

I met with Marty from Parking Services this morning. Computerized records only date back to 2005, but their should be some kind of paper trail that he is hoping to put together in a few days.

The emails Dr. Brown sent out were effective. He seemed to understand the overall goals of the project, although not all the details.

~Sarah

2007-10-17T23:57:00.001-04:00

Matt and I met last night and discussed the building energy use project. We talked about the progress that has already been made and difficulties we had encountered. Then, we tried to narrow down the steps we should take to complete the project. They were as follows:

1. Record all of the meters (electric, water, and natural gas) and the buildings they are tied to (separated by Green), along with the energy usage for each during the 2006/07 fiscal year.

2. Identify any holes in the data, or areas that may be confusing, such as meters that record electric use for several buildings, or buildings for which meter data cannot be found.

3. Tally energy use for all buildings and convert all units into BTUs. Where it is possible, this will be done on a building-by-building basis. In some cases, buildings may have to be grouped together.

We will continue to use the group spreadsheet on Google Docs to record our group's data.

Campus wide actions

2007-10-17T19:56:00.000-04:00

Nicole and I meet the other day to figure out goals as a group and to finish the survey. As she said it is completed, I will be passing out surveys to organizations that I belong to which should get us about 100 people.

One key thing that we are focusing on is putting CFL's in every dorm room when students get there so that they can use them in their desk lamps. It should be easy to show how much this could save in terms of money and the reduction of GHG's.

Also I am trying to figure out a way to get a program together to educate students.

share with my teammates

2007-10-17T00:11:00.000-04:00

One of my classes required me to go to the survey center and call people across Ohio tonight, so I missed the meeting with my teammates. As we discussed last Thursday, I contributed my thoughts in a written form. But probably I sent out to them too late today. Anyway here is an outline about my suggestions:

After a rough examination over current energy policies of Ohio University, carbon neutrality report of Middleburry College and renewable resource development plan of Ohio State, I would suggest we take the following steps to build our solution package for Ohio University.
1. Settle down the major areas that require immediate solutions to reduce the carbon emissions
My suggestions:
1) Electricity use for lighting, heating and machine running in each building, including student dorms
2) Transportation, including campus fleet and private cars
3) Fertilizer use
4) Personal consumption habits
5) Education
6) Offset activities
2. Map out possible solutions for each area
My suggestions:
1) Electricity:
A) Lighting: change all lighting bulbs into LEDs or compact fluorescent bulbs
B) Heating:
According to Middleburry College, the possible ways to reduce the power use for heating are updating windows facing the south to energy-saving windows in each building, adopting biomass as the energy source and resorting to solar energy as an alternative. These solutions are all applicable, but at considerable expenses. Placing meters in each building and student dorms to help control power use will be a more down-to-earth step currently and can be used as the first step. Cost evaluation must be conducted first before replacing windows and switching to biomass or solar energy.
It is also advisable to suggest the school maintain indoor temperature during winter time to around 26 C (about 78.8 F), the recognized temperature that saves energy and keeps people warm.
C) Machine running:
Computers, projectors and printers are among the most frequently used machines in the campus, not to mention those big machines to mowing the grassland and maintenance the golf course.
The first solution would be to diversify the power source of the campus, such as developing biomass and solar energy, to reduce the carbon emissions as well as to save the costs in the long run.
The second solution would be to educate machine users including the maintenance staff and students to keep the machines running in a low consumption manner. Good habits should be developed to reach the goal, including shutting down the computers if they are not supposed to be used in a considerably long time and avoiding leaving the machines running while not really working.

2) Transportation:
A) Campus fleet:
Adoption of biofuel or natural gas instead of diesel or oil is the first solution to reduce carbon emissions of cars and buses. Compared to private cars, campus buses are actually much better a way of transportation for students and faculties and therefore should be encouraged to develop, in my personal opinion.
B) Private cars:
Athens does not have an advanced transportation system that people can rely on to reduce their activities on cars. However, it is also because the place is small and most of the areas are within the walking distance. Therefore, encouraging less driving is the foremost solution. And like campus fleet, resorting to alternative fuels is also a good way of reducing carbon emissions.

3) Fertilizer use
So far I have little idea about how fertilizers are used in Ohio University. The possible solution I can think of is to reduce the usage as much as possible, and to purchase environmentally-friendly solutions instead of chemical ones as much as possible. But it is an area that requires further examination.

4) Personal consumption habits
This would be a big part of solution package that we can immediately start doing. It is an area that actually has many overlaps with above areas.
The habits that usually lead to high consumption of energy include: leaving computers, lights or air conditioning machines on while they are not in use; driving most of the time even within short distances; wasting papers in printing; keeping water running while it is not in use; never recycling wastes.
The solution to this can be combined with the following area – education. Notices can be posted in classrooms, libraries and labs to remind everyone save energy. Campaigns can be held to encourage people to drive less. For example, take the advantage of a soccer match to reward people who don’t drive to watch with T-shirts or extra tickets. Different clubs and associations in Ohio University can be included into a campus campaign that encourages them to integrate the notion of “low energy consumption” into their respective activities.
This is an area that we can do a lot of about.

5) Education
It will be advisable to persuade the school to set up an introductory course for freshmen and new staff of Ohio University about climate change effects and consumption behaviors. It can be a course that other levels of students or faculties can also take to earn some extra credits, but should be a compulsory course for freshmen.
I believe once this course is set up, it can have a more extensive effect than any other campaigns or activities we hold occasionally.
It is also advisable to cooperate with some non-profit organizations in this area. They can give lectures or hold activities in the campus to promote the notion of climate friendliness.

6) Offset activities:
Anyway OU will emit carbon dioxide. So, offset activities cannot be disposed. Tree planting is a common way of offsetting carbon emissions. Buying wind power or solar power can be another way. But it depends on the school budget and how we can first save the energy use for the school.
3．Evaluate costs and benefits on each area by using valid data.

2007-10-16T19:49:00.000-04:00

Donny and I met to go over the survey questions and potential solutions. Copies will be made and dispersed this week. The IRB will be submitted but to ensure some student responses before the end of the quarter, we thought it best to start collecting info now.

We are investigating cost-benefits of energy reduction using solar panels via Third Sun. We may need info on the square foot of building and energy consumption of the buildings. Does anyone have this data (or is the CA-CP tool spreadsheet available to us yet?)

Additionally, if we could get the # of commuters both students and faculty/staff from whoever has that data that would be great!

Fertilizer Paper Trail

2007-10-16T10:27:00.000-04:00

hello,
i have spent quite a bit of time this morning calling everyone under the sun in an attempt to find purchasing records for the fertilizer used by the university. im doing this in the hopes this will provide supplimental information to my mission. ill be meeting with Pam Callahan on thrs to discuss how the greens have changed over the last 17 years and i thought if i had some kind of paper trail it might provide some concrete data on tonnage bought. i figured i could also use it to back check my calculations and estimates.

i spoke with Pam, she is going to help me work out acreage and how and when things like the golf course have changed. this will no doubt involve some GIS work on my behalf, and with the info Gabe gave me last week it should work out. i spoke with Jullie Allison and she informed me how the grounds staff purchases their fertilizer. wether or not they use purchasing orders or the university p-cards, and why there is a difference when they do. i spoke with Ralph Six, he's in charge of purching orders. purchasing order records are only kept for three years (shoot!) and he let me know there hasn't been any purchasing orders for fertilizers in the last 3 years. so that means all of the fertilizer has been purchased with a p-card latley. he also let me know i would need the name of the fertilizer companies used by the uiversity to check with the p-card department.

so...im waiting to hear from David Hamill about which companies we have used. once i know that i can call Shannon Bruce in the p-card dept and cross refernce the records.

so thats where i am right now.

Recycling & Waste Data

2007-10-14T19:08:00.000-04:00

Ed Newman's folder contents were easily deciphered, and I have the recycling heavy-hitter data (cardboard, plastics, papers, cans, etc.) solid for most of the past 10 years. I'll be returning his files tomorrow. [Edit 10/15/07: Files returned.] What's missing is landfill totals for half of those years, and the special item recycling, like fluorescent bulbs, tires, computers, mattresses, and Re-Use donations. I have a list of names to call to fill in that data, starting at the landfill and filling in the rest as time permits. Hopefully when I'm done I can hand Ed back a complete & working spreadsheet.

Recycling and trash data is recorded as campus-wide totals, so I won't be adding this to the per-building analyses. I suppose we could get really creative and estimate building-level data from the recycling and trash pick-up schedule frequencies, but with that much estimation it wouldn't be "low-hanging fruit".

Travel data is intense

2007-10-11T22:04:00.000-04:00

Hello!
Sorry it has taken me so long to get this posted ...
A couple weeks ago a nifty little disk from Ron Chapman that contained every flight purchased on the Ohio P-Card since March of 1998. A spread sheet with over 40,000 lines to it, only about 18,900 of them have details pertaining to who, what, why, and where. So there is still a lot of investigating to be done. I am getting through it and will have more info this weekend.
Also in case anyone else is using P-Card transactions, Ron said to use the Transaction Date (not the Post Date) when splitting them up by fiscal years.

Search for Ground Transportation Info

2007-10-11T20:45:00.000-04:00

In regards to finding out transportation data for vehicles used by the university:

I have spoken to various people in the University system who do extensive traveling or management of van use, specifically, Dan Vorisek who manages the Challenge Course, and Danny Twilley, an instructor in Recreation Studies. I was directed to some various financial assistants who directed me to Tom Tesar who manages Outdoor Pursuits, who directed me to MotorPool, who directed me to the Pilchner building and legal records/John Burns. Hopefully this will turn up something more than another campus tour.

~Sarah

Fertilizer and Nitrogen numbers

2007-10-11T10:25:00.000-04:00

hey everyone,

i just figured out the Fertilizer and Nitrogen numbers the David Hamill sent me the other day. Wow are they big! I'd like to find out how much is average for a school to use and how we compare, just out of curiosity. There is still some information that wasn't included in his e-mail so i've tried to contact him in hopes he'll be able to fill in the gaps. He did not give me the numbers used on the greens, just the fields and the golf course.

i think after i get this figured out and completed, im going to work on how much gasoline is being used by the lawn care specialists at Ohio University.

Josh

2007-10-11T08:04:00.000-04:00

Hi all,

The IRB for the student survey is about ready to be sent off but I havent gotten any suggestion as to what should be included except for what Donny has written here. Does anyone from other groups want anything included?

A potential solution for air flights (although maybe not ideal) is buying conservation offsets in exchange for the flights. These programs are now getting into the mainstream light as they are on travelociy's homepage and Icelandair has them available for every flight--documenting how many trees will be planted in exchange for the mileage/carbon emissions in your flight. Although it will increase travel funds for faculty/staff it sounded like a decent option to consider.

Nicole

Requesting Commuter Records

2007-10-10T23:15:00.000-04:00

Hi,

I was the male with brown hair who was at parking services earlier this week. I was looking for commuter permit records and I was the recipient of about six raised eyebrows, as I had anticipated. I went to Pilcher House on Tuesday and submitted a request for the records. I am currently waiting to hear back from Legal Affairs.

Recycling Data

2007-10-10T21:56:00.000-04:00

Today I met with Ed Newman to get the data Nicole mentioned. We spoke for an hour or so about the history of recycling at OU and where he'd like to see us go as a campus. I learned a great deal about what happens to our recyclables after they leave campus, and the plans for the composting program. Then Ed showed me the relevant websites on campus recycling and recycle mania. The campus site is out-of-date, but he handed me hard copies of the more recent data. In fact he handed me a massive folder of fax print-outs and pamphlets and invoices and notes. Chances are, most of what we need is in there, and he gave me a list of phone numbers for any missing data, and for the landfill to determine what kind of treatment they use. I'm working on getting it digital and on one sheet right now.

Requesting Public Records

2007-10-10T21:03:00.000-04:00

Today, my search for transportation records took me to Parking Services on the West Green. Instead of the usual raised eyebrows that I am growing accustomed to, the receptionist said someone from the class (a male with brown hair) was there earlier in the week and I should submit a request to Public Records at the Pilchner House for these records.

If you are that person, please post. I'm thinking that one submission is better than two.

Thanks,
Sarah

2007-10-10T13:30:00.000-04:00

Hi Everyone,
I met with Ron Chapman Monday Oct. 8- we went over OU's energy for buildings and metering of OU buildings. After talking, our first step as a group would be to copy and paste meters from OU electric meter readings 06-07.xls file to the Building Metering.xls file for 06-07. (Which we hope to have done by thurs. oct. 11).Then following the Project Scope paper to get energy per square foot.
Also, I want to see if I can attach Kyle Brown's thesis to this blog- I think it would be useful to the class and our group. (couldn't attach- so i posted link- does anyone know a way to attach files to a blog?) See you Thursday.
~leah
http://www.ohiolink.edu/etd/send-pdf.cgi/Brown%20Kyle%20A.pdf?acc_num=ohiou1149880857

fertilizer reply

2007-10-10T11:45:00.000-04:00

here is the reply from David Hamill. Yeah!!!i'll be working out the percentages of Nitrogen tonight, im sure it'll take me forever.

Josh, I cannot go back that far on Nitrogen usage here on campus. Records are incomplete. What I can tell you is the approximate usage since about 2003. I picked 2003 because that is the year that the golf course reopened with the new configuration. Basically, since the opening, we are using about 4 pounds of nitrogen per thousand square feet per year. This is primarily done on the greens and fairways where where the maintenance is the highest. The analysis is generally 32-5-7 but other ones are used. Say in the fall when seeding is done we will typically use 12-24-9 so that the phosphorous enhances germination of the seed. Factors that enter in are weather. The past two summers have been extremely hot so we haven't applied as much nitrogen because we didn't want to stress the grass. Almost all the fertilizer that we use is poly-plus sulfur coated urea which breaks down much slower than the readily available nitrogen type fertilizers. Last year on the golf course we used approximately 7700 pounds of fertilizer. Not all of this was high nitrogen. What we call spoon feeding was done to the greens this year using 3-0-0 and 10-0-0 foliar feeds with micronutrients containing magnesium, iron, manganese, and calcium.It actually is a complicated thing but, maybe you will get from this what you need. On our athletic fields comprising of practice football, baseball and softball, are sand based fields which require a little more care due to irrigation requirements. Because they are sand based, the holding capacities are not as good as native soils. Since these fields have been installed around 1997-98, we have put about 5-8 pounds per thousand square feet per year of nitrogen and other nutrients when required. Soil samples are taken each year to determine the needs of each field. The athletic fields are approximately 12 total acres and on the golf course, the areas that we fertilize is somewhere between 45 and 50 acres. The soccer complex is about 80,000 square feet, is native soil, so it requires less nitrogen per year, about 3 pounds per thousand square feet.Some natural products that we have used in the past include turkey manure, kelp and kelp byproducts. But, due to the fact that our budgets have been cut significantly over the past six years and these natural products are expensive, we no longer use them. I hope this information will be of help to you. If I can be of any additional help let me know.Dave Hamill

fertilizer numbers

2007-10-09T20:45:00.000-04:00

i still have not gotten the numbers on the fertilizer from david hamill, he keeps telling me: yes, yes, yes. but so far i have not seen them. he has promised them to me by thursday, all i can do is wait. he seems like a nice guy, and he's awfully busy if you listen to him tell it. i think if i dont have them in hand thursday i'll have to go down to his office (where ever that is) and chain myself to his door.

"i wont leave untill i have the numbers!!!! save the wales!!!!"

-this may get political

lawn mower gas usage

2007-10-09T20:43:00.000-04:00

i talked to ron chapman about where it would be appropriate to put information reguarding the gasoline usage of the ground maintenence mowers and this is what he told me in a nutshell:

Josh -Just to confirm our conversation that regarding gasoline use for other than transportation purposes, we had considered that the appropriate means would be to quantify fleet gasoline purchases, determine that portion used for fleet use and that the balance would fall under the "OTHER" category for university fleet gasoline use for mowers - grounds maintenance etc.Ron

Update on survey and solutions

2007-10-09T19:43:00.000-04:00

I met with Ron Chapman last Friday and Ed Newman today about potential solutions and what is currently being done to reduce waste/energy especially in the dorms. Ed is going to look into dollar values saved in the past through recycling initiatives and see what previous data he can find. Additionally I have an email contact regarding who can send out a web-survey and am waiting to hear a reply before sending off the IRB. That's all for now...

One more thing...Ed Newman has data on recycling and waste if anyone is working on that...

Full-time and part-time students

2007-10-08T14:33:00.000-04:00

I spent the morning at the Institutional Research office going through enrollment data from 1990 - 1995. Data from 1995 - current is available from their website (I received instruction from Serena McCollum on how to retrieve the information that I need). One task completed, a thousand more to go. : )

Project Scope for Building Inventory

2007-10-08T11:25:00.000-04:00

Hi everyone -

We met with Ron Chapman last week to determine the objectives and goals for the project being done by the Building Team.

This is a copy of the document that Ron sent me regarding the nature of our project as we all see it -

"PROJECT SCOPE:

PART 1

Develop a complete listing of the main campus (Athens) buildings, their square footage and the various utilities they have. In addition, identify whether they have metering in place for these utilities; electric (AEP or OU distributed), natural gas and steam.

Ø A base file Building Metering.xls has the start of a complete listing.
Ø Buildings for which we have OU electric metering are included in the file named OU Electric Meter Readings 06-07(copy).xls I’ve added the building numbers into the current version of the file OU Electric Meter Readings 06-07(copy2).xls that should assist you in your effort
Ø Buildings for which we have AEP electric metering are in AEP Electric 07-08.xls file
Ø Buildings for which we have Columbis Gas metering are in Nat Gas 07-08.xls file
Ø Water meters are for those accounts as listed in the Water Invoice FY06-07.xls Please note that I’ve compiled a cross-reference listing of those buildings with individual water meters and their building numbers in a tab named Bldgs included within the file Water Invoice FY07-08.xls

PART 2

Using supplied data, determine the amount of energy per square foot (MMBTU/ft2) in campus buildings. I would suggest that you start with a small group of buildings and work your way through the complete list as time permits.

Ø Electric use data is available in OU Electric Meter Readings 06-07(copy).xls
Ø Natural Gas use data in available in Nat Gas 07-08.xls Summary data for Natural Gas use (annual) is found in NAT GAS DATA.xls
Ø Water use data for FY07 is available in Water Invoice FY06-07.xls
Ø I’ve compiled a cross-reference listing of those buildings with individual water meters and their building numbers in a tab named Bldgs included within the file Water Invoice FY07-08.xls
Ø Common identifier (Building Number is available in part in each data file for Nat Gas, AEP Electric and Building Square Footage files
Ø The hard copy document titled All Campuses All Buildings has the building numbers to be used as a common identifier. In most cases, the number has already been incorporated into the data files but you may need to add these numbers to others."

All the files listed here will be posted on blackboard as soon as possible...

Drew

Building info

2007-10-07T13:39:00.000-04:00

i got some information on the building square footage from Diane Mack the other day. i tried to post it on the Bb drop bok, but there seems to be a problem with my flash drive. look for it monday, i'll be using the universities computers.

josh

Fertilizer

2007-10-04T20:29:00.000-04:00

we should be hearing from the fertilizer guy by the end of this week (tomorrow). he'll have the numbers as far back as he can go, he'll also have the tonnage bought each year, the organic/synthetic ammounts, as well as the N-P-K ratios of it all. with that info i can figure just how much nitrogen has been dumped on the lawn in the last ten years. that should be cool, or maybe it'll be scary.

last week we got the most current version of the carbon calculator from ron chapman, it should be a big help with our project.

i just sent an e-mail to Diane Mack, she shold be able to finally provide us with accurate numbers for the building square footage. i'll post her reply, than maybe i'll finally bean active part of this blog.

everyone please remember the copy of the carbon calculator should be on the Bb site by the end of the night... as long as i can figure it out. please feel free to contact me if any one needs some help doing ANYthing.

Josh

Solutions

2007-10-04T17:17:00.000-04:00

Southern Oregon University passed a bill to add $15 to every college bill so that they could offset their energy use.

This passed with 85% of the vote of their student body.
The offsets are for both their electric use and natural gas use.

In our survey we could ask the student body the amount of money they would be willing to pay for offsets.

This is the link to the website if anybody would like to take a closer look.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/05/students_vote_t.php

GIS files

2007-10-04T14:58:00.000-04:00

Yesterday Matt sent me the GIS files he got from Dave Simon. Thanks, Matt!

Looking through the files, they are spiffy. We got athletic field outlines (including the mini-golf yard at the ridges), the golf course, parking lots, some campus roads, water, and of course buildings. The buildings file especially has ALL campus buildings, including the ones in Albany at the OU airport. I'll have to double check to see if that includes buildings we lease. Attached data includes fun things like when the building was built and whether or not it is occupied (OU has 10 derelict buildings on campus). Together with Athens county material like roads and towns, we're well set.

I'm not sure how to put this stuff somewhere the class can reach. Do only the GIS team need to access the data? Ideas?

P3 International Kill-a-Watt Electricity Usage Monitor

2007-10-02T23:05:00.000-04:00

Here's the link for the Kill-a-Watt meter at Amazon.com. It seems pretty cool.

Comparison schools

2007-10-01T19:23:00.000-04:00

I am looking into several of the schools (though not to overlap with Chong Wu and Donny) that have posted their tech report of the inventory results on the clean air cool planet website. Potential solutions can be discussed tomorrow in class.

Additionally, I will contact Ed Newman regarding what is involved in the residence challenge and recycle mania or who to contact about that.

Hasta manana~

GIS files and Waste Leads

2007-09-30T22:03:00.000-04:00

No reply yet from Dave Simon, so I sent him a reminder nudge today and offered to pick up in person any files too large to email.

I've decided to tackle campus waste, focusing on recycling-to-trash ratios and sewage treatment. Ed Newman of Campus Recycling said he'll send me records on recycling and solid waste sometime this week, and gave me leads on who to contact for sewage data:

OU Utilities Director Mick Harris at harris@ohio.edu
City of Athens Utility Director Nick Carr
Larry Lambert over the City of Athens Sewer Department

That's all for now. =)

What they are doing can be what we will do

2007-09-29T22:50:00.000-04:00

Nicole, Donny and I decided to devote ourselves this week to examining other schools' solutions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in their campuses.

Here are two examples I found so far (I posted here so that we would not repeat each other's work)

1. Incorporate energy efficiency measures into design and operation of campus buildings

This is what many schools are adopting to help with alleviation of greenhouse gas emissions, such as the University of New Hampshire. UNH implemented several measures in its residence hall, including using energy-smart lighting system, revamping building control systems and energy education for maintenance and operations staff as well as the broader university community. According to UNH, through a series of retrofits and educational programs, it is estimated that the university saves $4 million annually in energy compared to national average.

The University of Vermont has a more detailed description about its carbon neutralization projects related to buildings management:
*The temperature and ventilation on most major buildings are controlled through time and scheduling programs with specified settings.
*All major buildings on campushave had lighting upgrades to T-8 or compact fluorescent light bulbs - incandescent lights are no longerinstalled on campus.
*Campus vending machines received an recent energy retrofit in 2003; eighty Vending Misers™ power down their lighting and cooling systems after 15 minutes of inactivity, preventing an estimated 176,000 pounds of CO2 emissions per year.
*In August of 2003 UVM replaced all laundry washing machines on campus with Maytag Neptune high-efficiency washers that each save up to $150 per year.
*The emergency exit signs in every campus building were replaced with LED bulbs during the 2003-2004 school year.

Campus buildings, including dorms, and the facilities inside should be considered as the core to the whole GHG reduction solution pack, because most of the energey consumption in school comes from these objects. It is also complex to develop detailed solutions for each building. But the main idea is clear: to have each equipment and each person who uses the equipment become energy efficient. Change the lightbulbs to LED bulbs, change the habit of keeping computers running all nights, remove unnecessary energy-consuming facilities...are all that can help carbon reduction.

2. Energy education for faculties, staff and students

The University of Vermont has a peer-to-peer education program with which students work in dorms to educate each other about reducing electricity use.
The UVM has also implemented the "Sleep is Good" campaign for computers, and placed mouse pads in all of the computer labs with info on the program. This is to encourage students to shut down their computers while they don't use them.
Similar projects also include a display using bikes to power appliances; lightbulb exchanges; and events.
The energy education looks particularly attractive to me. It will be a good idea, too, to have OU consider adding similar courses and holding similar campaigns for students, staff and faculties. Particularly, it is important to educate students who live on campus to save electricity in their dorms. Athens is a small town, so it will also be significant to encourage students to reduce their use of cars for transportation.

GIS files

2007-09-26T19:28:00.000-04:00

I got a promising email today:
------------------------------------------------------------
Gabe,

We have a lot of the GIS layers for the campus. Let me know what you need and in which format and I can send it to you. You can call to discuss as well.

Dave

Dave Simon
Data and GIS Specialist
Voinovich School for Leadership and Public Affairs at Ohio University
The Ridges, Building 22
Athens, Ohio 45701
Mailto: simon@ohio.edu
740-597-2506
------------------------------------------------------------

I emailed back this evening:
------------------------------------------------------------
Dave,

That's wonderful! We were hoping for shapefiles of the following: buildings, grassy areas, parking lots, athletic fields, golf course, streams & ponds, campus grounds boundary, and roads. We need files that include the outlying areas like HDL and West State Street. Polygon format is more helpful than line or point. That should keep us busy a good long while, but I'd love to chat with you or look at a list to see what else is available.

Thank you so much!!
~Gabe

Useful URL for class

2007-09-25T18:27:00.000-04:00

Hello -
Don't forget that the URL = http://www.presidentsclimatecommitment.org/
is a great place to start on your class project.

--KJB

GHG Seminar Launches

2007-09-18T18:26:00.000-04:00

Hello from the Class!
We are stoked to get started.
This is a test post from Dr. Brown

--KJB

Square footage assessment

2007-08-09T15:29:00.000-04:00

Ron and I met today and went over all of the discrepancies between the information provided by Ron and the information provided by the Office of Institutional Research. We believe that some of the discrepancies may be accounted for by transcription errors, and others are because the Office of Institutional research did not seem to update their informaiton after buildings were renovated. However, we were not able to come up with an explanation for the differences in the data for the Ridges. Ron will converse with Diane Mack (?) and try to clear up why the information does not match.

Good Luck, team!

GHG Meeting Today

2007-08-08T13:05:00.000-04:00

Hey guys, Laura and I have to work today and we won't be able to make the meeting. Amanda's updates: I have just started gathering student enrollment data from the Office of Institutional Research. I have also sent an email to Jennifer asking how we should incorporate data from OU's airport and flight program. I have also made contacts with the main people at the airport whom I'll be getting the information. Laura still needs to talk to Ron about discrepencies in square footage and plans on talking to Ron sometime on Thursday (tomorrow). Hope everyone else is doing well.

Amanda and Laura

Fall OU-GHG Seminar = Thurs 6-8pm, course # TBA

2007-08-08T10:41:00.000-04:00

Hello from the Ecological Society of America's Annual National Meeting in San Jose CA!

I have been working with Dr. Michele Morrone (the director of Environmental Studies) to make a fall 2-credit seminar come together on the topic of OU's GHG inventory. I hope you guys can attend/enroll? Either way, there will be close coordination between the GHG Team, EEC, and the student experience in this seminar.

I have requested the course time to be Thurs evenings, 6-8pm. Here's the course blurb:

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

ES XXX: Ohio University's Greenhouse Gas Footprint: Theory and Applications.
Instructor: Dr Kim J. Brown, OU-PBIO Asst. Prof. (brownk4@ohio.edu)

In the context of both voluntary guidelines as well as state-level mandates, Ohio University is in the process of evaluating its energy and greenhouse gas footprint. This is an applied process that includes aspects of engineering, accounting, economics, and biology. Students enrolled in this seminar will gain marketable, hands-on experience in the analysis of the policy and applications of helping a huge institution like OU quantify their carbon footprint. OU needs YOU!

2007-08-07T11:13:00.001-04:00

I have found the appropriate people to talk to at Ohio U's airport but I am having trouble finding the correct area of the spreadsheet to enter airport transportation data. I have emailed Jennifer about this and am waiting to hear back.

Square Footage Problems

2007-08-02T12:14:00.000-04:00

I have finished comparing the data for square footage, and I have found many errors. Several discrepancies are only a few square feet off, most are 1,000-9,000 square feet, and some are tens of thousands of feet off. I must meet with Ron next week when he comes back from vacation because it seems like some of the numbers may just be old numbers that were not updated either by Facilities or the Office of Institutional Research. I found roughly 40 errors. One difficulty in checking the information was in the lack of consistency of the names of buildings. On one set of information, for example, the name of the building that I work in is called "Facilities Shops 2", on another set of information it is called "Facilities Shops 2 - Old Storeroom" and on another it is called "Factory St, Stores." There are many examples of this type of inconsistency.

Square Footage Assigned

2007-08-02T12:03:00.000-04:00

I (Laura) was assigned the project of checking all of the square footage figures for inputting into the CACP v.4 calculator on July 18th. The assignment was to check the information in use by Facilities for all of the General buildings, Dorm buildings, the Ridges, and Auxillary buildings against the information provided by the Office of Institutional Research.

Amy Found Her Notes!!

2007-07-26T13:31:00.001-04:00

Ok, so what follows is my attempt at communicating my GHG data checking so far:

A few weeks ago I started fact checking the data Ron had already input into the CACP v.4 calculator. I worked on the On-Campus Cogeneration Plant and the stationary sources on campus sections. I found the following errors:

1.) Data for Natural Gas from the On-Campus Cogeneration Plant was only available for years 99-00 through 04-05. I used the Laushce Steam Production Costs chart that Ron gave me to verify this data. The first problem is that all data from this chart for natural gas was reported in units of MCF, but the v.4 calculator calls for naural gas to be reported in MMBtu. Data from the steam production chart for years 04-05, 02-03, and 00-01 matched the calculator data, though these numbers may need to be converted because they are apparently still in MCF. Data from the steam production chart for 03-04, 01-02, and 99-00 did not match the calculator data, however, and were reported as 236,855 MCF, 78,885 MCF, and 232,523 MCF, respectively on the steam production chart. Again, these are only the MCF values from the steam production charts, and those values in the calculator may be correct MMBtu values, but since I don't have MMBtu values or converstion factors, I'm providing this info for what it's worth. Regardless, at least half of the values for natural gas in the On-Campus Cogeneration Plant will need to be fixed because as of now they do not all reflect the values, converted to the correct units, that are available on the steam production charts.

2.) For the tons of coal used in the On-Campus Cogeneration Plant, I found only one error. For the years 99-00, the tons of coal burned was 20,844 instead of 18,988, according to the Lausche Steam Production Costs chart.

3.) I could only find steam output data for the On-Campus Cogeneration Plant beginning with 99-00 and ending with 04-05, though Ron has reported other data on the v.4 calculator (where did this other data come from? it will still need to be verified). For the steam output data that was available, it was reported in pounds on the steam production chart and then converted to MMBtu (which the v.4 calculator calls for) by dividing by 1,000. Assuming this is the correct way to convert data from LBS to MMBtu, this data from 1999 through 2005 for steam input from the On-Campus Cogeneration Plant is correct.

4.) I could only find natural gas data for stationary on-campus sources beginning with 1991 and continuing through 1999, though Ron had reported data for other years on the v.4 calculator (again, where did this come from and it will need verification). For the natural gas data that was available, it was reported as CCF on the "General Fund and Dorm Fund" sheet that came from Bruce M, Ron's predecessor. The v.4 calculator required the data to be in MMBtu, and the data was divided by 10 to make this conversion. Assuming this is the correct way to convert CCF to MMBtu, this data from 1991 through 1999 for natural gas from the on-campus stationary sources is correct.

Ok, so that was my best shot at converting my color-coded notes and scribbles into words. Hopefully it's clear enough for someone to pick up from- I will leave my original notes in the yellow folder in the Office of Sustainability along with all the data sheets Ron has given us. For any questions, I am available by email at an235806@ohio.edu

I'm not sure how much more I'll be working on the GHG inventory, as I will only be working in the Office of Sustainability for a few more weeks. At any rate, I'm working on a press release about the inventory and the new Presidents Climate Commitment website (http://www.ohio.edu/climatechange) is now live- be sure to check it out and send me any comments. Thanks everyone!

Amy's Notes are MIA

2007-07-25T15:39:00.000-04:00

So I was going to post my notes on here from the information checking I did a few weeks ago, but seem to have misplaced them for the time being. I was working to confirm the data in the "On-Campus Cogeneration Plant" and the "Stationary Sources" sections of the version 4 CACP calculator. For the most part, I think the discrepancies I caught were reasonably well covered by Sonia's meeting notes from the 11th. If I find my notes I'll be sure to put them on here!

Meeting with Ron-April Henderson

2007-07-24T17:09:00.000-04:00

Today I had a meeting with Ron about the next steps involved in extracting the budget information. Our main contact woman about the budget numbers is April Henderson. Ron did get ahold of her today during our meeting, however, with final closing approaching, she may be too busy to extract the necessary data for our inventory. That being stated, a second option will be to research the budget question at the archives section in Alden Library on the fifth floor. If it is necessary for me to do this, then I will see what budget numbers are available to provide a broad brush stroke of the numbers required for the budget subsection. After discussing this, I asked Ron what should be my next step in this inventory as a means to focus my energy. I told him that I was interested in collecting data relating to agriculture and I will be looking into the issues regarding agriculture as soon as I close the data collection on the budget.

Budget/Faculty-Staff Compensation and General Operating FTE Budget

2007-07-24T16:02:00.000-04:00

http://www.ohiou.edu/instres/factbook/budget.html - This site shows the data for the changes in budget and faculty-staff compensation operating funds from 1977-2007.
http://www.ohiou.edu/instres/Factbook/ftestaff.html This site shows a General Operating FTE Budget for staff of the Athens campus.

The Correlation between Budget and the Greenhouse Gas Inventory

2007-07-23T18:03:00.000-04:00

In response to Sonia's question about the correlation between Ohio University's budget and the actual Greenhouse Gas Inventory, I contacted Jennifer Schroeder, Campus Program Officer at Clean Air-Cool Planet and with a prompt reply she said this:

"That budget information is really just a way to provide you for
different normalizing factors, ways to look at your carbon intensity.
So everything you collect in the section of demographic information
(budget, building square footage, population) allows you to see if there
are correlative factors for your emissions data: emissions per building
square foot, emissions per student, emissions per energy dollar, etc.
None of that data is absolutely necessary, it is just to provide
context.

As for research dollars (and research square footage), the assumption is
that the more research-oriented you are, the more energy intensive labs,
equipment, etc. that you will be running. Operating dollar, similar
philosophy: it's interesting to track whether a bigger budget translates
to more or fewer emissions on your campus.

Again, what data you collect in this section is discretionary - just
gather whatever is most useful for your own campus.
Hope this helps.
Best,
-Jenn"

This seems to solve the question as not only does this financial information provides us with a context within to work, but also to see if there is correlation between high research dollars and high carbon emissions, etc. I will contact Ron in the near future about our other budgets required for the greenhouse gas inventory.

Data should be based on fiscal years

2007-07-23T17:18:00.000-04:00

This is just a note to say that according to Jennifer Schroeder, program officer and webmaster for Clean Air-Cool Planet, the majority of colleges collect data based on fiscal years. I am posting this as a separate post because I think it is relevant to categories for which information included in previous posts about this issue is not.

Notes: Meeting, July 18 '07

2007-07-19T11:40:00.000-04:00

Meeting Notes

July 18, 2007

In attendance:
Sonia Marcus
Ron Chapman
Jarrod Pollard
Laura Allen
Amanda Annis
Kim Brown

Jarrod's update: hasn't been working in the office this past week. Had issues posting to the blog because he couldn't remember his user name.
On the budget issues, Ron talked to Julie about archival data. She said OU posts financial statements on the web. They're on there now, but the links aren't active. Sonia said she thinks that's due to the fact that they've just overhauled their site. Someone should let them know that the links aren't active.
Julie said that April Henderson is the person to contact directly for archival budget info.
Question: Is same info available for branch campuses? Not clear yet. Ron will floow up with Julie.
Kim says that individual colleges have hard copy reports of budgets filed at Alden. April has these too in her office, acc to Ron.
Laura's update: didn't get a task from Ron this past week, but is planning to work on the square footage data once Ron shows it to her. Note that square footage data will need to be compared back to figures from institutional research. Ron has those figures.
Kim's update: Fred Kight would like her to come to WOUB News Watch to talk about the EEC's role in the President's Climate Commitment. She will discuss what this group has been up to so far.
Kim also met with the CEO of the Chicago Climate Exchange last week because they are looking for a forestry person. She said that a number of colleges and universities including Michigan State have joined the CCX, and that we might want to consider that. Sonia and Ron shared some info about past discussions that have taken place at OU regarding that. One benefit of joining that Kim pointed out was the possibility of selling offset credits at the CCX if we are able to reduce our own GHG emissions past the 6% (per year) required. Could be an additional incentive to do forestry projects, for example. However, we could not then count those as our own offsets if we were to sell them off. Can't do both.
The Russ College has appointed Kevin Crist as the representative of the college to the PCC sub-committee of the EEC. Kevin has expressed interest over the years in having OU join the CCX.
Amy wasn't present, but Ron updated us on some of her findings and progress (posted on the blog! Go Amy!): All the data we use for the spreadsheet should be in fiscal years, acc to CA-CP. That makes it easier for us. Also, they were able to clarify what they mean by "efficiency". In house use of steam is included. Again, that makes things easier.
Ron pointed out that industry efficiency standards are 80% for overall steam efficiency and 35% for produced electricity.
Sonia's update: Sorry about not posting last week's meeting notes yet. Will be more prompt in the future. Sonia is meeting with Bruce Nottke and Marty Paulins, the new hires in the Transportation & Parking department on Monday to discuss sustainability issues. Amanda will be there too to talk to them about our data needs for the GHG emissions inventory.
Amanda would like to investigate GHG data as concerns the airport and air travel. Amanda and Ron will meet in the next few days to discuss those data needs. Then Amanda will get in touch with the appropriate contact person there.
Ron pointed out that getting independent travel info that will be useful to our inventory is going to be VERY DIFFICULT. We instituted use of the Oracle system 2 years ago, so that data is searchable, but everything before that is in hard copy. Also, Oracle just gives you dollar values for travel, and nothing like miles traveled or destination. That might be added to the form in the future but we still won't know for all past travel.
Kim suggested that it might be interesting to do a regression analysis to figure out whether there would be a reliable conversion factor for dollars to GHG emissions. Perhaps that could be a project in the fall seminar.
VP Bill Decatur recently required all departments under his command to submit travel plans for the upcoming year in advance. That has specific destination info in it. Maybe the other VP's have made similar moves? Worth asking.
We should also ask the CA-CP people whether other schools have tried to determine a conversion factor for $$ to GHG emissions for travel.
Sonia let the group know that there was a possible summit of IUC schools in the works for October here at OU to discuss implementation of house bill 251. More on that soon. Also, Sonia will be meeting with the sustainability coordinators at Oberlin and OSU (and possibly Miami) on July 30th to touch base.
Kim suggested that we include University of Cincinnati and figure out what they're up to and how they are approaching the PCC there.

END

Notes: Meeting, July 11 '07

2007-07-19T11:16:00.000-04:00

Again, I apologize for being tardy in getting these posted!

Meeting Notes
July 11, 2007

In attendance:
Sonia Marcus
Amy Nordrum
Ron Chapman
Jarrod Pollard

No one seems to be using the blog! This is a problem. Everyone who is working on collecting or processing data in any way should be postings updates on their progress (or lack thereof, as the case may be) at least twice a week. We have to keep in mind that we are creating a resource for people outside our group and outside our university to understand what we are up to. It is also essential to our communication within the group. So post twice a week, fer cryin' out loud!
Amy's updates and questions, as well as comments from Ron --

- Natural gas varies in its BTU potential during the year. In the summer, you can get more MMBTU per MCF than in the winter. That has to do with the rate of withdrawal of the gas from the ground.

- Volumes do not need to be modified. But if we post in MMBTU's, that's going to depend on the year and the time of year.

- We had MCF's and MMBTU's in the version 4.0 of the spreadsheet which was one reason for the discrepancies. The newer version asks for natural gas in MMBTU's.

- Industry assumption is the following: 1 MCF = 1 million BTU's = 1 MMBTU

- Currently we are actually getting 1.0986 MMBTU per 1 MCF. So they're not exactly the same.

- Is the data reported in fiscal years or calendar years? Or according to the academic calendar?? Amy should ask the CA-CP person about this. All data from Ron is fiscal year-based.

- On coal (used to generate heat at Lausche): OEPA, USEPA and DOE require calendar year documentation on % ash, BTU per lb., % sulfur, SO2.

- Coal data entered into the 4.0 spreadsheet looks good.

- Ron commenced reporting mid-year in fiscal year 2000. Before that it was someone else (Bruce).

- Amy needs conversion factors for natural gas and steam (lbs to MMBTU's). She will use historical average of conversion factors for nat gas data from pre-1999.

- Bruce's data is stored in hard copy somewhere at the Ridges but we're not exactly sure where.

- Amy was pulling steam values off of actual production documents, not summaries. No data pre-1999.

- Ron has solid numbers back to January 1998 (mid fiscal year 1998).

- We have to make sure we are being consistent with fiscal vs. calendar year data!

- Converting steam to MMBTU's:

1 lb of saturated steam has a latent heat value of 1000 BTU

1000 lbs (1 kilopound) --> 1 million BTU = 1 MMBTU

- Amy could not find effiency values for steam production. Ron does a separate report with total MMBTU of gas and coal. In that doc, you get average overall blended efficiency of gas and coal. So that doesn't do the trick.

- 82% was an estimate of efficiency suggested by Clyde Pierce, chief operator at the Lausche heating plant. We need to analyze this further. Ron will go back and look at monthly reports to determine heat input to derived heat output value. Is that what CA-CP means by "efficiency"?

- Prior to 1999, there is no split between Lauscho gas and the rest of the gas used on campus. Problematic! Two old notebooks have been located which may contain more detailed info. Ron will look through them.

- No data for nat gas for all stationery sources on campus after 1999. Amy couldn't find it in the charts. That will be total gas minus Lauscho gas. Ron will check.

- About 11% of heat is produced using nat gas, 89% using coal.

Jarrod's updates, comments, questions:

- Looking up info on operating budget, 06-07. Checked all info from prior years and it looks ok.

- The 06-07 budget numbers will change to some extent until final close. Need 5 more days or so.

- Also trying to find energy budget and research budget. Will go through institutional research for this.

- Ron says Diane Mack might be of help at institutional research.

- Jarrod is also interested in agriculture & transportation issues.

- Bruce Nottke is the new Transportation Director. He has been alerted that we are going to be investigating records of miles, overall fuel use by type, fleet efficiency, overall # of vehicles, etc.

Sonia pointed out that the date was wrong for Gov Strickland's signing of the Executive Order on the document comparing the PCC vs. house bill 251 vs. the E.O. Ron let us know that the Governor actually signed it on January 4th, 2007. He will correct that file and re-send. Certain provisions were made effective immediately, others in April.

END

How Cool is Ron Chapman?

2007-07-19T11:14:00.000-04:00

Wow, Ron Chapman is officially a blogger!

We are so proud of you, Ron!

Square footage

2007-07-18T15:41:00.000-04:00

Copies of the square footage speadsheets are now on the N:\Energy _Issues - directory for evaluation. We'll need to compare the files with the hard copy documents from Institutional research for accuracy and then work backwards to establish previous years totals. The summary document in the GF square footage EXCEL spreadsheet should be pretty accurate but confirmation is a good idea. See me for details. - Ron

Calculator Answers

2007-07-13T08:35:00.001-04:00

This is the e-mail I received this morning from Jenn regarding the questions I posted earlier:

Hi Amy,
1) Usually, fiscal years.
2) I'm not sure I'm following the efficiency question. You should count
the steam you use in the plant as part of the total steam output. And in
determining the steam production efficiency. Default values for co-gen
efficiency from the EPA's Climate Leaders program are eH = 80% and eP =
35% (where H=steam and P=electricity - see
http://www.epa.gov/climateleaders/docs/indirectelectricityguidance.pdf)
if that helps any...
Hope that helps; if not feel free to email back or call: 603 475 3587.
Best,
-Jenn

Calculator Questions

2007-07-12T09:47:00.000-04:00

I e-mailed Jennifer Schroeder, program officer and webmaster for Clean Air-Cool Planet, regarding two questions about CACP's emissions calculator that were raised at last night's meeting. The questions were:

1. Do the majority of colleges using this calculator collect data based on fiscal years, academic years, or calendar years?

2. We use part of the steam we make in our on-campus cogeneration plant within the plant, and this could affect our steam efficiency data. Does the steam efficiency category of the calculator take this into account, or are we expected to subtract the amount of steam we use internally from the amount of total steam produced when we use this number for the steam efficiency calculation?

Notes: Meeting, June 27 '07

2007-06-28T15:29:00.000-04:00

Meeting Notes
June 27, 2007

In attendance:
Sonia Marcus
Amy Nordrum
Ron Chapman
Amanda Annis
Kim Brown
Laura Allen
Jarrod Pollard

The copy of the spreadsheet that we will all be inputting data into is stored on the N drive here at Facilities, within the 'Energy Issues' folder. In that folder, you will find the working copy, as well as a copy of the version 4 GHG calculator that Ron was working on last year with Christen Steele.
Ron will keep a master copy of our spreadsheet in his own locked drive. He will carry info over to the master copy from the working copy as it is verified.
Here is the color code we will use for data cells in our working copy: If the data is inputted and it has not been verified the cell will be red; if the data is inputted and Ron is working on verifying it the cell will be yellow; if the data has been verified and carried over to the master copy the cell will be green
When you log in to the computer, your user name is stored for comment authoring in Excel. So if you add a comment to a cell, that comment will be attributed to you
Here's how to add a comment to a cell: Right click on the cell, and then choose "insert comment". VERY IMPORTANT: Please add a date to your comment. This will not be done automatically by Excel! The default font size for comments is 8; Ron usually increases it to 10 for readability
If you would like to copy and paste a comment elsewhere, you can go to the first cell and choose 'copy' and then 'paste special' in the new cell, selecting comments only
Comments within the cells of our spreadsheets should deal with source documents. Other kinds of comments should go on the relevant section of our blog
If you need to update the data and the source document for a particular cell, add a comment saying that you are doing so. Do not delete the earlier comment with the original source listed!
We can use Ron's laptop here in the ORC so that more than one person can have access to our working copy at a time
Kim pointed out that some facts and figures regarding the university (e.g. enrollment statistics) can be misleading because regional campuses either are or are not included
A working definition for each data type can be entered in as a comment at the top cell of each column (e.g. for "Full-time students" we might enter a working definition in a comment which says "Students enrolled for 15 or more credit hours at the beginning of fall quarter")
If there is a green triangle showing up in the corner of a cell, that means that there is a formula in that cell the way Ron has this spreadsheet configured
If there is a red triangle showing up in the corner of a cell, that means that there is a comment on this cell
We need to keep copies (electronic) of all the documents we are sourcing the data from. We will keep these in the 'Energy Issues' folder on the N drive. Ron has some hard copy sources that we will need to scan in as PDFs.
The students will set up times to meet individually with Ron over the next 2 days to get assignments. Ron will be out all next week.
No group meeting next week. We will meet again on July 11th at 4pm sharp. Kim will be away.

2007-06-22T11:01:00.001-04:00