Overall Rating Gold - expired
Overall Score 74.38
Liaison Lisa Kilgore
Submission Date March 1, 2018
Executive Letter Download

STARS v2.1

Cornell University
OP-6: Clean and Renewable Energy

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 0.71 / 4.00 Mark Howe
Program Manager
Energy Managment
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Total energy consumption (all sources, excluding transportation fuels), performance year :
3,318,088 MMBtu

Option 1 

Total clean and renewable electricity generated on site during the performance year and for which the institution retains or has retired the associated environmental attributes:
15,403 MMBtu

None
A brief description of on-site renewable electricity generating devices :
Cornell owns and operates two hydroelectric generators. The turbine manufacturer is Ossberger and the units are rated at 712 kw and 997 kw. In addition, there are multiple campus building with roof-top PV. FY17 generation 176,000 kWh Snee, Klarman, HEB, Fernow, Day Hall, Campus Store

Option 2 

Non-electric renewable energy generated on-site, performance year:
544,000 MMBtu

None
A brief description of on-site renewable non-electric energy devices:
Cornell also has a heat exchange facility (Lake Source Cooling) to produce up to 20,000 peak tons of chilled water for campus. It generates renewable cooling by exchange heat to cold water from deep in Cayuga Lake saving 86% of the energy of conventional cooling (~25 million kWhr/year, about 10% of total campus electricity usage). Cornell has installed two solar hydronic hot water systems. The systems use the solar energy to heat water in evacuated tube solar collectors. The systems are designed to offset the need for fossil fuels to provide a portion of the heating and hot water needs of two campus facilities (23 total panels with 30 tubes each). Each tube is rated at 1,000 btu/day at peak summer solar insolation.

Option 3 

Total clean and renewable electricity generated by off-site projects that the institution catalyzed and for which the institution retains or has retired the associated environmental attributes, performance year:
32,048 MMBtu

None
A brief description of off-site, institution-catalyzed, renewable electricity generating devices:
Cornell has seven PV arrays located on Cornell property. The generation is credited to the Ithaca campus via remote net metering by NYSEG. Cornell was responsible for catalyzing these projects. The generation is purchased via Power Purchase Agreements. Cornell owns the environmental attributes and officially retires those attributes via the New York state attribute tracking system. The retirements are approved & document in RGGI.

Option 4 

Total third-party certified RECs, GOs and/or similar renewable energy products (including renewable electricity purchased through a utility-provided certified green power option) purchased during the performance year:
0 MMBtu

A brief description of the RECs, GOs and/or similar renewable energy products, including contract timeframes:
n/a

Optional Fields

The website URL where information about the programs or initiatives is available:
http://energyandsustainability.fs.cornell.edu/sustain/sustenergy/default.cfm

Additional documentation to support the submission:
---

 

Sierra magazine requests the following information from U.S. institutions that wish to share data with that organization:

Electricity use, by source (percentage of total, 0-100):
Percentage of total electricity use (0-100)
Biomass 2.10
Coal 5.50
Geothermal ---
Hydro 30.40
Natural gas 25.90
Nuclear 30.60
Solar photovoltaic ---
Wind 4.70
Other (please specify and explain below) 0.80

A brief description of other sources of electricity not specified above:
Other: Includes fuel oil, PV Notes: the %'s above are upstate NY State Grid values (eGRID2014) issued Jan 2016 Cornell operates an on site co-generation plant, which is 99% natural gas Cornell operates an on-site small scale hydro-plant, which provides approximately 2% of campus electric usage.

Energy used for heating buildings, by source::
Percentage of total energy used to heat buildings (0-100)
Biomass ---
Coal ---
Electricity ---
Fuel oil 0.01
Geothermal ---
Natural gas 99.90
Other (please specify and explain below) ---

A brief description of other sources of building heating not specified above:
---

Percentage of total energy consumption from clean and renewable sources:
17.83

Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
---

The information presented here is self-reported. While AASHE staff review portions of all STARS reports and institutions are welcome to seek additional forms of review, the data in STARS reports are not verified by AASHE. If you believe any of this information is erroneous or inconsistent with credit criteria, please review the process for inquiring about the information reported by an institution or simply email your inquiry to stars@aashe.org.