The recent
dramatic rise in the cost of petroleum fuels
including home heating oil, has led to renewed interest in alternative
sources for space and potable hot water heat, particularly during the
winter months in Maine. With current personal and university
budgets this is driving interest in saving energy that has not been
seen since the Carter administration. However, this
interest is, in many ways, a sideshow. This interest is driven by
financial concerns, but the real issue is the effect of our dependence
on fossil fuel on global climate change. This concern is driven
in part by research evidence from one of the leading research
groups on the UMaine campus, The Climate Change Institute.
The Climate Change Institute is housed, in part, in the Sawyer
Environmental Research center at the far end of campus. One of
the great ironies of this particular building is that it is one of the
most wasteful building on campus, probably second only to the
Engineering and Science Building. Ironies abound! This
project is focused on fixing this situation. The design of this
building needs to be rethought from the beginning and evaluated based
on the needs, usage and efficiency of different heating and cooling
strategies. The use of fuel oil in the summer as a part of the
inefficient heating system should be ended. The waste of heat
from the large ice core freezers needs to be rethought, and the overall
integration of the building systems needs to be a part of a new
building systems design. And, as you can imagine, the support
from the building occupants is high. This is a group of
researchers who is as dedicated to solutions as to the identification
of problems and we can help. This is an engineering problem. |
