Cornell University
OP-7: Building Energy Consumption

While Cornell earns only 0.28 points for this credit for a slight decrease in energy use intensity (metered usage/sq ft), Cornell has had an Energy Conservation Initiative for well over 15 years. Millions of dollars have been spent to re-commission building systems ($1.5 million/yr continuous Cx), install new controls and variable frequency drives, energy efficient lighting and occupancy sensors to modulate room temperatures/ airflows/lighting automatically based upon space usage. In addition, all building energy use is measured, recorded and monitored on a regular basis. Cornell is using the metered heating, cooling, and electricity usage of the buildings as the data for this category. Since 2005 (Base Year) Cornell has kept their energy use/gross square foot nearly flat with only a very slight decline. This is commendable in light of the fact that Cornell has added over 1,000,000 square feet (~8% of campus)of research buildings that are high intensity energy users. To acheive the slight decrease in the energy usage per square foot of built space is significant.