As the University of Washington plans major new buildings on the west side of campus, environmentalists are calling on it to step up its green building practices.
From any angle, the solar panels on the University of Washington’s new Life Sciences Building are hiding in plain sight.
They’re contained in the glass “fins,” or projections, that run vertically up the southwest side of the new biology building. It’s a type of solar installation that’s never been tried before — here, or anywhere — making this one of the greenest buildings on the UW campus.
But the new building doesn’t come close to what some other universities are doing to reduce their carbon footprints. Environmentalists say the state’s flagship university should be pushing the envelope with buildings that reflect the UW’s ambition to be a clean-energy research hub.
UW is the biggest single user of electricity in the city, paying almost $1.8 million a month to keep the lights on. Its steam plant, which heats campus buildings and runs on natural gas, produces nearly 83,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases a year.
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And the school is poised to expand its footprint in a major way — with as much as 6 million square feet of academic, athletic, research and office space in the University District.
The UW “is on the forefront of so many things, but the leadership on the building sustainability level is not where it should be,” said Chris Meek, an associate professor of architecture in the UW Center for Integrated Design.
Universities are well-positioned to showcase green energy, said Amanda Sturgeon, CEO of the International Living Future Institute, a nonprofit based in Seattle. That’s in part because of the teaching potential and in part because colleges build for the long term — with construction that lasts for decades, if not generations.
“A lot of universities around the country are stepping up” to meet the Paris Climate Agreement goals to reduce greenhouse gases, she said. “We’d love to see the UW stepping up, as well.”
But there’s a tension here: As a public institution, the UW must be careful about how it spends public money. “We want to be good stewards of our public funds,” said Mike McCormick, associate vice president of capital planning and development and a member of the UW’s Environmental Stewardship Committee. “That’s going to tend to keep us off the bleeding edge.”
Keeping cool
The new Life Sciences Building houses biology labs and hundreds of computers running around the clock. Even in the cool Pacific Northwest, it will need to be air-conditioned more days than it will need to be heated.
Architect Perkins+Will proposed vertical pieces of glass, or fins, shading the windows, which also generate electricity through solar film sandwiched in between layers of glass. The electrical wiring is hidden in the windows’ mullions.
How well will these work, compared to the conventional solar panels that were installed on the roof? Standing outside the building one day this month and looking up at the 496 fins that cover the southwest side of the building, project architect Devin Kleiner said he frankly did not know.
These panels are expected to perform better than conventional photovoltaic panels in cloudy weather. They won’t perform as well when the sun shines brightly.
“They did a fantastic job with this building,” said Christoph Strouse, a recent graduate who works on sustainability issues for the UW.
Not every new building does as well, Strouse said. Several groups wanted the Population Health Building, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and now under construction, to become a “living building” — producing its own energy, for example. (Note: The Gates Foundation funds The Seattle Times’ Education Lab through a grant.)
But in that building, the UW is instead focusing efforts on using nontoxic building materials that have the least impact on human health, McCormick said. Many building materials contain known carcinogens and other chemicals.
Other universities have been more cutting edge.
The University of California system has set a goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2025. It has expanded on-site solar power production on its 10 campuses and put money into a solar farm that generates 80 megawatts of electricity.
Seattle University, a private school, has committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions 12 percent by 2020 and 51 percent by 2035 from buildings, solid waste, university-owned vehicles, business and athletics air travel, and commuters to campus. It is ahead of its goal, having reached a 25 percent reduction this year. Meanwhile, this week Seattle U became one of the first universities in the state to pledge to divest from fossil fuels by 2023.
Climate action plan
The UW has a climate action plan, but it’s more of a plan to have a plan, said Claudia Frere-Anderson, director of the UW’s sustainability and business diversity program. “We’re still in the process of trying to figure it out,” she said.
The UW plan calls for the university to reduce its 2005 emission levels by 15 percent by 2020, and 36 percent by 2035. The school says it is on track to meet that goal.
At the University of California, all buildings now must meet the highest rating level of platinum for environmentally sound buildings, called Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED. (There are four levels: certified, silver, gold and platinum.)
The UW is required by state law to meet LEED silver, but McCormick said the UW is voluntarily raising the bar and making all of its newest buildings, including the Life Sciences Building, meet LEED gold.
Brad Kahn, spokesman for the nonprofit Bullitt Foundation of Seattle, said LEED silver or even gold aren’t good enough.
“We need buildings that store more carbon than they emit,” he said. “That capture rainwater for all purposes, including drinking. That contain no toxic chemicals and wood only from forests that are responsibly managed.”
The Bullitt Foundation’s building on Madison Street in the Central District is an example. It’s the greenest office building in Seattle — and it claims to be the greenest commercial building in the world.
Its overhanging roof of solar panels generates slightly more energy than the building uses — feeding extra power into the grid during summer months, and using power during the winter. Its toilets compost waste, and the site has a small wetland that cleanses what’s known as dirty “gray water” from sinks and dishwashers.
The building’s 400-foot-deep geothermal wells help regulate the temperature with groundwater that stays a constant 53 degrees year-round. It’s warmer than Seattle’s wintertime weather, cooler than its summertime temperatures, so it is used for heating and cooling.
One afternoon late this summer, the automatic windows had opened all around the building and a gentle breeze flowed through the offices. The lights were off on most desks; people worked by natural light. If it had been hotter that day, shades would have come down to cool the building’s exterior.
Some of the Bullitt Center’s systems would be easy to incorporate, including heat pumps and windows that open and close in response to the temperature. “All of that is ready for prime time, and I don’t know why more buildings don’t have systems like that,” said Meek, with the UW Center for Integrated Design, which is located in the Bullitt Center.
Five years after the Bullitt building opened its doors, there’s not another place like it in Seattle. But Georgia Tech, Yale University, Hampshire College in Massachusetts, California State University in Monterey Bay, and Williams College in Massachusetts are all planning, or have built, similar buildings, Sturgeon said.
Still, there is a building on the drawing board that could become the UW’s first model for a truly green building.
The UW’s Clean Energy Institute was founded in 2013 to accelerate the adoption of clean energy. It wants to build a cutting-edge building that practices what the institute preaches, in the so-called “innovation district” on the west side of campus.
Institute Director Daniel Schwartz believes the organization can partner with nonprofits and industry to build a Bullitt Center-like building, or cluster of buildings, that will be iconic without being extravagant.
The new building is planned for the west side of campus, the university’s so-called “innovation district,” where it’s expected that startups, foundations and nonprofits will join with the university to build as much as 3 million square feet of high-rise buildings.