Lucid recently attended the Smart and Sustainable Campus Conference hosted by NACUBO (the National Association of College and University Business Officers). This is our second year attending the conference, which we have found to be a really valuable experience. Since the audience is more geared toward campus administrators, operations managers and staff the content tends to be focused, detailed and solutions oriented.
One of the challenges we hear over and over again, from colleges and universities of all sizes, public and private, is that there isn’t enough money in their budgets to invest in energy efficiency and conservation. Given this common problem, one of the most interesting talks this year was delivered by California Institute of Technology’s Energy Manger, Matthew Berbee, and Sustainability Manager, John Onderdonk.
Among the many interesting initiatives they are working on, including the recent instillation of 2MW of Bloom Energy fuel cells through a Purchase Power Agreement, it looks like they might have cracked the funding nut.
