Grant to fund Mizzou Dashboard project

The Rocky Mountain Institute is challenging schools to go green.

By Jake Kreinberg

Published July 7, 2009

MU will receive a $25,000 to $50,000 grant through the Accelerating Campus Climate-Change Initiatives program in the fall, funded by an anonymous foundation and administered by the Rocky Mountain Institute. The exact amount of the grant is yet to be determined.

Former Sustain Mizzou President Patrick Margherio said MU's Sustainability Office would be overseeing the grant and it would be used for the Mizzou Dashboard project, an energy-monitoring system on campus.

RMI solicited proposals from schools across the country in August 2008, hoping to study various systems implemented to lower greenhouse gas emissions, said RMI senior consultant Michael Kinsley. The organization sought campuses of different sizes, ranging from small community colleges to four-year state universities.

"The unique needs of campuses are why there was a diverse group of campuses chosen," said Niles Barnes, projects coordinator at the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, which worked with RMI to select 12 schools from the original 50 applicants. "For example, community colleges have an enormous need to figure ways to mitigate emissions related to transportation because so many of those campuses are commuter campuses. At a big four-year state school, a lot of the emissions are from the heating and cooling of buildings."

Kinsley said MU's attitude toward cost efficiency contributed to its selection.

"Our impression is the principal driver for the campus' efforts to reduce its fossil fuels use is to save costs, instead of reducing its carbon footprint," Kinsley said. "Interestingly, that motive has not in any obvious way reduced its level of excellence in reducing its carbon footprint."

Former Sustain Mizzou presidents Ben Datema and Margherio drafted MU's proposal. Kinsley said the application was especially unique and attractive because students wrote it.

RMI also reviewed the Mizzou Dashboard Project, which is installed in Schurz, Hatch and College Avenue Residence Halls. Margherio said the project is a real-time energy monitoring system that tracks the efficiency of different buildings on campus. It then displays the results on its Web site, allowing users to compare buildings for up to a month at a time and translate kilowatt hours spent into dollars or even miles driven in an automobile.

RMI sent a team of student researchers to each of the 12 schools in February to gather information on the advantages and disadvantages of the campus and provide feedback on the proposal.

"While on campus, the RMI team noted that Sustain Mizzou was one of the most sophisticated and diplomatic student organizations they had seen in their study of campus sustainability efforts," according to the MU Environmental Studies Web site.

The teams then formally presented their findings during a conference of the member schools last month in Denver.

Margherio said he anticipates the bulk of funding will be devoted to Mizzou Dashboard installation costs and a separate physical device that can collect data usage inside each building. He said the remainder will be used to create a campaign around the technology, to get students involved in learning and enacting more energy-conscious behaviors. This will include various marketing tactics, including another competition among residence halls to determine which can save the most electricity over a certain period of time.

RMI is reviewing applications starting July 6 and then will recommend the amount of funding each campus should receive.