The recently completed IDEA Project on Dal鈥檚 downtown Sexton Campus has not only added study and workshop space 鈥� it might be groundbreaking for the university鈥檚 sustainability goals.
鈥淥ur goal is to increase sustainability every way we can across campus, and a project like this is a perfect fit for our mandate,鈥� says Rochelle Owen, executive director of Dal鈥檚 Office of Sustainability. 鈥淭he 国民彩票 Facilities Management and Office of Sustainability team works with project architects and engineers and other staff to ensure sustainability is top of mind in every aspect of the project, but also provides research and learning opportunities for students and faculty.鈥�
Dal鈥檚 goal for new buildings is to strive for LEED Gold or higher, explains Owen. LEED庐, which stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is a third-party certification program and the internationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction and operation of high-performance green buildings. The rating is based on six categories: sustainable sites; materials and resources; water efficiency; indoor environmental quality; energy and atmosphere, and innovation and design process.
鈥淏ased on a number of features such as geo-exchange and solar systems the project is tracking as a LEED庐 Gold Candidate with a stretch goal of hitting Platinum,鈥� says Owen.
The $64-million project earmarked $4 million for specific green features, while others were naturally integrated in the construction. The result is a campus that has incorporated construction materials that are dramatically more energy efficient than an equivalent code compliant commercial building.
Here are some of the impressive highlights.
Earth Energy
Much of the heating for the two new buildings (the Emera IDEA Building and the Richard Murray Design Building) comes from below the Sexton athletic field. Because the ground absorbs energy from the sun, it acts like a battery in storing relatively constant temperatures all-year round. There are 60 boreholes, each of them 500 feet deep filled with a food grade glycol/water solution that captures energy from the ground through heat transfer. In the summer, the cooler ground temperatures allow heat to be rejected from the fluid into the near-by ground and in the winter the warmer ground provides heat to the piping fluid for heating. The geo-exchange heating and cooling reduces energy use and reliance of fossil fuels for the whole campus.
Solar PV and Energy Storage
There are 469 solar photovoltaic (PV) panels on the roofs of the two newly constructed buildings converting solar light to electricity. Over 180 kw of battery storage will be used for research, teaching, and peak shaving.