Carter Chang
Steven Lanou
Leon Glicksman
December 2010
Sustainability Behavior Throughout Campus
Working together as a community, we can make a difference by taking action on energy and the environment. There are various initiatives throughout campus that will help promote energy conservation as well as sustainability behavior. The Behavioral Change Subcommittee believes that there are many behavioral solutions to energy conservation and greenhouse gas emission reduction that could have significant impact. Currently, there are preliminary pilot projects thatinvestigatethe effectiveness of individual behavioral sustainability projects. The goal of this research is to create a detailed action menu that identifies impactful sustainability behaviors and quantifies the associated energy savings.
This semester, I worked with Steve Lanou from the Sustainability Program in the Environmental Programs and Prof. Leon Glicksman from the Building Technology Program in developing the Sustainability Behavior Action Menu. Looking through MIT’s preliminary projects and other campuses’ sustainability behavioral initiatives, I created an initial Action Menu Matrix that identifies the financial, environmental, and strategic aspects of behavioral projects. In regards to the financial aspect, the matrix identifies the return of investment, installation costs, and annual energy savings. It also provides the amount of steam, chilled water, electricity, and associated carbon dioxide reduction. These financial and environmental values were calculated by data obtained from MIT Facilities, IS&T, and previous reports. Finally, it proposes various methods of establishing the projects with a scale that provides the difficulty of implementation.
I plan on furthering my UROP by diving deeper into the quantitative aspect of these projects. In-depth assessments of energy savings need to be performed for the individual projects in addition to completing the extensive Action Menu Matrix. After evaluating these projects, I will be able to identify high-impact behavioral projects that will be effective at MIT to help promote energy conservation as well as sustainability behaviors throughout campus.