Energy Initiatives
In November 2008, Lumina Foundation for Education awarded $800,000 to the Midwestern Higher Education Compact to implement regional initiatives to improve higher education productivity for colleges and universities that face increasing costs for energy and utilities as well as those for employee and student health care.
As a first step in the process, the MHEC Energy Advisory Committee worked in cooperation with APPA - an association of higher education facility officers - on APPA’s Facility Performance Indicators (FPI) survey to get a better understanding of the energy usage patterns of the colleges and universities in the MHEC region.
Following an analysis of the survey data, the MHEC Energy Advisory Committee identified energy cost savings program possibilities. The committee examined the needs and uses of various energy products and projects from both the large campus and small campus perspective and finally agreed upon approaching the issue in two phases.
The first phase will be to establish group procurement contracts that can save institutions money on the energy components that are purchased on a regular basis by a broad range of institutions in an effort to reduce their overall energy consumption. This phase is viewed as potentially beneficial to all types and sizes of institutions, regardless of their level of energy sophistication. Those campuses that have done little or no work on campus-wide energy reduction projects can particularly benefit from these types of contracts.
The first area the committee is pursuing in this phase is electrical energy reducing equipment. In late January the committee released an Electrical Components Solution RFP http://www.mhec.org/RFPs.
The second phase will be to examine the bundling of energy services and products together to enhance the value of already existing cutting edge energy reduction products and make them more available to a broader range of institutions at a reduced cost.
For additional information regarding the Energy Advisory Committee and its efforts, please contact Grant Wolters at 612-625-6568 or Rob Trembath at 612-624-1848.