Approximately 84 million Americans spend their days in colleges, universities, and public or private
primary and secondary schools.ii The commercial building sector, which includes educational
institutions, accounts for 18.44 percent of overall energy consumption in the United States.iii
Education buildings are ranked third highest of all commercial buildings, consuming over 600
trillion Btus of energy each year.iv Given these consumption levels, educational institutions have an
opportunity to make a significant impact to increase energy efficiency in this country. The
University of Michigan (herein, also “the University” or “UM”) has been working diligently to be
leaders in this charge.
In 2012, the Alliance to Save Energy proposed a goal of doubling energy productivity in the United
States by 2030, thereby getting twice as much economic output for every unit of energy input.v This
goal inspired Johnson Controls, Inc. (herein, “Johnson Controls” or “JCI”) to approach the University
with a Master’s Project, enabling a group of students to learn from the expertise of Johnson
Controls, and to be active participants in sustainability efforts at the University of Michigan.
Additionally, the findings and recommendations developed to increase energy productivity on
campus should likely contribute towards the University’s existing sustainability goal of reducing
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
This project seeks to harness the knowledge, technology and best practices honed by Johnson
Controls from decades of experience in energy conservation projects, as well as the expertise from
the University of Michigan, including various professionals and organizations that actively work
towards energy efficiency measures on campus. Leveraging these and other resources, our six
graduate student member team (Appendix A) analyzed the University of Michigan’s current energy
demand and management. We learned about the extensive work the energy management team has
already been doing for several decades in some areas on campus, and about what opportunities
there are for improvement.
Our master's project team identified several recommendations for furthering the collective energy
efficiency performance of the University, as well as recommendations on measures that can be
taken in the Samuel T. Dana building (herein, the “Dana building”), which serves as a case study for
the project. The key findings and recommendations, both campus-wide and for the Dana building,
are detailed here.