Look For a Project

The United States has set a target of 83% reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Drexel University will need to make reductions on this scale as its contribute to meeting this national goal. Drexel’s current plan to achieve these reductions relies greatly on the purchase of wind energy. Previous work by CAEE senior design students at Drexel has found that there are more cost-effective approaches available right on Drexel’s campus (CWEPH 2017). Examples of promising approaches to reduce carbon emissions include the generation of energy from renewables on campus, decentralized approaches to managing stormwater and treating wastewater, and incentivizing the use of public transit. The area with perhaps the greatest potential for cost-effectively reducing emissions is the retrofit of buildings on Drexel’s campus to make them more energy efficient. However, building retrofits require extensive capital investment, and engineering expertise is required to forecast which investments would realize sufficient savings in utility bills and emissions to be warranted.

During the 2016-17 academic year CWEPH (2017) compiled information on the layout and historical energy use of Drexel’s buildings. These datasets have been archived in an online repository and are available for use by a student group in the 2017-18 academic year. An analysis of Kelly Hall was also completed using the bin method during the past academic year. A senior design group selecting this topic would have a number of options to extend this work. Retrofits could be considered for many other buildings. Disque, MacAlister, and Stratton are all large old buildings that might benefit from retrofits. Development and calibration of a building energy simulation model, such as eQuest or EnergyPlus, would allow for a greater variety of energy conservation retrofits to be considered and would provide more detailed information on what the expected performance of the building would be after the retrofit.

The project includes options that could be pursued by non-architectural engineers. A civil engineer with a transportation focus could design a low-carbon transportation plan. In particular, Drexel students have expressed interest in electrification of shuttle buses and evaluating this option could be an element of this transportation plan. Environmental engineers might conduct a lifecycle impact assessment of suggested measures, or design regulatory structures, such as the sale of carbon offsets or distribution of tax benefits to donors that might incentivize lowering emissions on campus.

This project will provide students with a challenging problem informed by available data on Drexel’s campus. This combination of circumstances will enable the student group to produce an actionable plan for the university to undertake cost-effective emissions reduction measures.

References
CWEPH 2017. 80 x 50: Deep Reductions in Drexel’s Carbon Emissions, senior design final report, Department of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA.

Patrick Gurian

06/06/2018

Architectural engineering

Philadelphia Office of Sustainability may be able to play a role convening academic institutions (but no specific commitment at this point).