Colleges power down for holidays

PHOTOGRAPHER: Sara Foss

When energy costs skyrocketed after Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005, Siena College closed down almost its entire campus during winter break. The school set the temperature at 50 degrees and told employees to stay away until early January. Typically, the heat is set at 67 degrees.

The main goal was saving energy and money, and Paul Steck, Siena’s vice president for finance and administration, estimates that the annual “campus closing” saves between $35,000 and $40,000.

But the school found that there are other benefits.

“When people come back, they’re refreshed,” Steck said. “They feel really good. They come up to me and say that this is one of the best things that the college ever did. It’s been a good morale booster.” In the past, many staff members continued working through the holiday week. “Now it’s like, ‘Goodbye,’ ” he said. The shutdown also gives Siena’s facilities staff a chance to do things they can’t do when campus buildings are occupied, such as renovations.

In order to make Siena’s annual “campus closing” happen, the school reconfigured its holiday schedule by shifting two of its 14 paid holidays to December, thus enabling employees to take a full week off.

Other schools are taking similar steps to save money and energy.

This year SUNY Cobleskill will extend its winter break — what the school calls “intercession” — by one week and move the spring semester back a week. During that time, which will run from Christmas Eve to New Year’s Day, the school will lower temperatures to the mid-to-low 50s and turn off the hot water. A few buildings will remain heated and open, such as Knapp Hall, the building where student services are located, and Porter Hall, the dormitory where international students live. In all, eight out of 10 dormitories will shut down.

SUNY Cobleskill spokeswoman Holly Cargill-Cramer said her school has been closing down its buildings during break for a few years now. “We started doing it just to be green,” she said.

As an agriculture school, being green is one of SUNY Cobleskill’s goals, Cargill-Cramer said. “It’s built into our long-range plan, to do business in a more sustainable way,” she said. “Sustainability grew out of agriculture.”

The school recently received a $250,000 grant that it will use to replace the college’s greenhouses, which were built in the 1960s, with new, energy-efficient greenhouses. An energy audit performed on campus showed that replacing the eight greenhouses with more efficient greenhouses will save an estimated $80,000.

The University at Albany has also announced an energy-savings initiative for winter break that the school estimates will save about $250,000.

During intercession, which started Saturday and will run through Jan. 15, the school will reduce the temperature and lighting throughout its buildings, which should result in a reduction of an estimated two million kilowatt-hours of electricity and 150,000 therms of natural gas, according to the University at Albany. “This will represent a total of 3.75 million pounds of carbon dioxide emission reduction, which is the equivalent of taking 350 cars off the road for a year,” the school said in a news release.

skidmore cuts back

At Skidmore, temperatures in unoccupied buildings will be lowered to about 60 degrees from the normal temperature of 68 to 70 degrees. The school took similar steps during the five-day Thanksgiving break. In addition, students and employees are being asked to turn off and unplug appliances whenever possible.

Skidmore has also announced a special one-time-only extension of the holiday break this year to “enhance potential savings,” according to Andrea Wise, a spokeswoman for the school. For the majority of non-union employees, the break will run until Jan. 2, a Friday, rather than Jan. 1, which will allow the school to set back thermostats through Jan. 5.

“Although Skidmore has typically made an effort in the past to conserve during these breaks in schedule, this is the first year the college is strongly advocating on the matter,” Wise said in an e-mail. “The reasons are to conserve fuel, reduce the college’s carbon footprint and to save on energy costs.”

The school is also planning to install new heating controls in dormitories and replace windows and roofs. New motion sensors will be installed in hallways, so that lights are only on when people are present, and in the spring the school will hire work-study students to serve on an “energy savings patrol.” Starting at 10 p.m., the energy savings patrol will visit campus buildings to make sure lights and computers have been turned off. There will also be contests to see which residence halls can do the most to reduce their energy consumption.

Phil Wadja, a spokesman for Union College, said the college has been shutting down its 105-building campus during the school’s six-week winter break, which runs from Thanksgiving to New Year’s, for years. “That’s something that’s been on our radar,” he said.

The thermostat is set in the 58 to 62 degree range, all of the school’s hot water heaters are shut off and housekeeping and security make sure the school’s lights and computers are shut off. These measures add up to about $40,000 in savings, Wadja said.