printable versionEco-friendly buildings are big step toward shrinking Stanford's carbon footprint
BY MICHAEL PEÑA
Anarchitect’s rendering of the interior of the Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki Environment and Energy Building, which is scheduled to be completed in the fall.
Whatever the exact size of Stanford's carbon footprint, the university faces one inconvenient truth: An estimated 98 percent of its emissions is generated by energy used in buildings, while just 2 percent comes from Stanford-owned vehicles.
One of Stanford's top sustainability goals, then, is to ensure that future buildings are constructed in a way that conserves as much raw material and energy as possible. A motto adopted by university planners states: "The most sustainable building is the one that is never built."
But at a world-class university, growth in academic programs and departments is inevitable. This, in turn, increases the need for new classrooms, laboratories and buildings.
So when Stanford must build a new structure, its plan must first meet a rigorous set of university guidelines for sustainability. The rules also apply to renovations, which are Stanford's preferred option when trying to create more space on campus. There are several projects on campus that stand out as shining examples of what sustainable building is all about.
The newest is the Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki Environment and Energy Building, a 166,000-square-foot, eco-friendly structure at Via Ortega and Panama Street that soon will house the Woods Institute for the Environment, the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and several interdisciplinary environmental research programs.
The bulk of a $75 million gift by alumni couple Yang, co-founder of Yahoo! Inc. and a Stanford trustee, and Yamazaki, a director of the Wildlife Conservation Network in Los Altos, is being used to cover construction costs. The project broke ground in 2005 and is set to be completed in the fall.
The building will use 56 percent less energy than a comparable but traditional structure and 90 percent less water. Other features will include an atrium that provides natural light and ventilation, four types of test photovoltaic systems that will generate a total of 15 kilowatts and a sophisticated heat recovery system that will use warm air leaving the building to preheat fresh air coming in.
"It's Stanford's definition of what it is committing to, in terms of reducing its carbon footprint and reducing its energy usage and reducing its resource usage as it develops these new, very exciting facilities," said civil and environmental engineering Professor Jeffrey Koseff, one of the Woods Institute's two directors. The other, Barton "Buzz" Thompson Jr., is a professor of law.
Another building that embodies sustainability is the Carnegie Global Ecology Center, an extremely low-energy laboratory and office building that emits almost three-fourths less carbon and uses one-third less water than a comparable structure. Those reductions are possible because the building's orientation allows for natural lighting and shading; the building also includes no-irrigation landscaping, low-flow sinks and dual-flush toilets.
The center opened in 2004 at 260 Panama Way, with exterior siding of salvaged wine-cask redwood and one-fifth of its concrete derived from recycled aggregate. This year, the American Institute of Architects named it among the top 10 buildings in the country that exemplify sustainable architecture and green-design solutions. (Located on the Stanford campus, the center is part of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. Many of the center's staff scientists are also university faculty members.)
Then there's the Leslie Shao-ming Sun Field Station at Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve, just west of the main campus. When the $3.3 million research facility opened in June 2002, it set the bar high for sustainable building with an array of environmentally friendly features—waterless urinals, wall insulation made of recycled newsprint and salvaged, century-old bricks, to name a few.
But the major features that collectively enable the building to meet its annual energy budget of net zero carbon emissions include a 22-kilowatt, grid-connected photovoltaic system, a passive cooling design that eliminates the need for air conditioning in 90 percent of the building, and the use of a special type of concrete that produced 15 tons less carbon dioxide as the material was made and resulted in an estimated 15 tons less fly ash that otherwise would have been generated as a by-product of traditional manufacturing methods.
"What may surprise many people is that most of the same principles that we talk about today were discussed and implemented during the design and construction of the original campus," said Jack Cleary, associate vice president of academic projects and operations in the office of Land, Buildings and Real Estate.
"For example," Cleary continued, "buildings that respond to the environment, the conservation of our precious resources such as energy and water, and the responsible development of our lands were important principles for the design of the original campus buildings. These same principles remain today."
Further evidence of Stanford's commitment to remaining a leader in this regard is the recently completed restructuring of the university's Facilities Operations division into two more-focused entities: the Department of Buildings and Grounds Maintenance and the Department of Sustainability and Energy Management (SEM).
A nationwide search is under way to find an executive director to run SEM. The directors of Stanford's utilities and parking and transportation programs, as well as a new sustainability programs manager, all will report to whoever is hired to head SEM, and he or she will in turn report to Cleary.
"We have many exciting challenges ahead of us as we look for new and innovative ways to preserve and manage the precious resources that make Stanford a special place," Cleary said. "As we move forward, we know that these changes to our organization will position us to be the leader among our peers—in California and the nation—in our operation, maintenance and sustainability initiatives."
A few of the other university-wide initiatives that fall under the sustainability umbrella include:
And across campus, recycling bins are ubiquitous for segregating paper waste and empty bottles and cans, for electronic waste such as CDs and empty toner cartridges and, most recently, for food and organic waste that can be composted, including the "Spudware" starch utensils used in Tresidder Memorial Union and other campus venues.
But given that the bottom line for most sustainability efforts is shrinking that carbon footprint, Stanford stepped up to the task in December 2006 by joining the California Climate Action Registry. The 98 percent estimate is one figure in the university's final inventory of greenhouse gas emissions that is now being prepared. The results will be made public through the registry.
"Carbon is really the basis of it," said Robert Reidy, vice president for Land, Buildings and Real Estate. "All of the other sustainable initiatives that we're doing—green building, green procurement, recycling—all of that feeds into this umbrella of carbon reduction."
For more information, go to the website for Sustainable Stanford, the umbrella group overseeing efforts across campus: http://ssu.stanford.edu.