Pippa Bianco/YH

On Tower Parkway, near Payne Whitney Gymnasium, there is a building. Two lions patrol its doors. Rolling plumes of condensate rise into the sky from its stacks. This building is the Central Power Plant, which powers the lights on Yale’s central campus. The university gets energy from two power plants: the Central Power Plant and the Sterling Power Plant, which powers Yale Medical School and Yale-New Haven Hospital. Beneath central campus, pipes for heating and cooling purposes stretch for more than eight miles.

Utilities for central campus cost about two million dollars a month, but most of the power comes from Yale’s own plants. Because the Central Power Plant makes its own electricity and runs parallel to the electrical grid, Yale produces about 90 percent of the energy it needs, primarily using natural gas. (When the output of the two plants is not sufficient, Yale takes energy from United Illuminating’s grid.)

Yale’s Central Power Plant is a cogeneration plant, meaning that the power plant reuses the waste heat from the generating turbine to boil water and generate steam. In effect, nearly all the energy works twice. The Central Power Plant’s manager, Thomas Starr, explained that there is a need for heating and cooling every day of the year, even “at times when it doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense”—for instance, a science building running experiments might need heating during the hottest summer day. (Labs often use up to three times more energy per square foot than administrative, classroom, and residential areas.)

But with Yale’s high energy use and even higher expectations comes increased pressure for environmental sustainability. Five years ago, President Levin announced plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 10 percent below what they were in 1990 by 2020 (a 43 percent reduction from 2005 levels). So far, Yale has produced a seven percent reduction in campus emissions, despite a five percent increase in campus size—a success in large part due to innovations in Yale buildings.

Thomas Downing is Yale’s Energy Manager and one of Yale’s accredited Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Professionals. He is responsible for many of Yale’s innovations in energy conservation, such as the solar cells on top of the Divinity School, the fuel cell at the Peabody Museaum, the wind turbines on top of the Becton Center, and the thin film PV installation on the roof of Swing Space.

Because of their energy conservation systems and low emissions, many of Yale’s buildings have received high LEED ratings. The LEED system aims to quantify the sustainability of a building based on a variety of criteria. In Stoeckel Hall, for instance, there is a half-flush option for the toilets, while Yale claims that the two new residential colleges will be some of the most “carbon-stingy” buildings around.

Kroon Hall, the main building of the Yale School of Forestry, was built specifically to gauge Yale’s progress in the construction of carbon-neutral buildings. In a positive reflection of the school’s devotion to effective paths of energy conservation, Kroon was awarded a Platinum LEED rating, the highest possible. “Last summer, when there were maximum daylight hours and minimum occupancy, the building was self-sustaining in terms of electricity consumption,” Downing said.

Yale sometimes adds features to its buildings for demonstration purposes, to prove the feasibility of certain techniques. Additions like the wind turbines on the roof of the Becton Center fulfill just one percent of the energy requirements for the building, but they prove that small-scale wind energy can be effective anywhere—though it can be expensive. In this vein, there is a currently a plan for a solar-powered hot water heating unit in Payne Whitney Gymnasium, but it is still in formulation.

“Energy, carbon reduction, and renewable energy at Yale all overlap,” Downing said. “The big driver, however, is carbon reduction.” The idea behind President Levin’s energy conservation philosophy is that a major institution like Yale can make significant carbon reductions without breaking the bank. Yale’s knowledgeable in-house staff of professionals and leaders in the field of energy conservation can set an example for other universities.

But Yale isn’t interested in competition. As Downing said, “Every campus is unique. It’s us versus ourselves.” The implication is that every Yale student, faculty member, and employee must do his or her part. Yale has made significant strides in carbon reduction, but recent sustainable innovations are only part of this success.

“Renewable energy is the drive for show,” Downing admitted. “It contributes the least to carbon avoidance on campus. The best way is via energy conservation. If you don’t need [energy] in the first place, then you don’t need to find out where to get it.”