University at Albany

Institutional Goals

• Climate neutrality by 2044

Background

SUNY Albany, also known as the University at Albany or UAlbany, is a 500-acre campus located in New York’s state capital city. With more than 100 buildings across its campuses in Albany and Whiteface and more than 6.5 million square feet of space, the campus boasts 15 LEED-certified buildings, including two LEED Platinum buildings.

UAlbany began using geothermal as a decarbonization measure for two campus buildings. The first building, Liberty Terrace, is a student living facility built in 2012. This five-story, 500-bed residential hall is served by 150 boreholes that are each 450 feet deep.

The second building, ETEC , is a 246,000-square-foot state-of-the-art building that opened in 2021 and houses researchers, educators, and entrepreneurs under the same roof. The $180 million building opened in 2021 and included a geothermal field of 190 boreholes and solar panels on the Uptown Campus Podium to save about 70% in energy costs, with efficient fixtures to reduce water usage by 40%, and green stormwater management including a porous parking lot and a teaching green roof. ETEC uses approximately 60% outside air and still maintains an energy use intensity of just 65 kBtu/square foot/year—well below the 103 kBtu/square foot/year target the SUNY Construction Fund Directives initially set. This is particularly impressive given that 40% of ETEC’s square footage is laboratory space.

The main Uptown campus is served by a central heating and cooling plant, which operates 365 days a year, relying on the skills and experience of more than 80 team members from the HVAC and central plant staff. This plant uses four gas-fired high-temperature hot water boilers that collectively pump out an average of up to 60 MMBtu per hour.

Solutions Explored

As a public institution, University at Albany is subject to New York State climate mandates under the 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) , followed by Executive Order 22 , which directed state agencies to develop a sustainability and decarbonization program. These mandates require all public institutions, including the University at Albany, to help meet the state’s goals of an 85% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels by 2050.

In response, UAlbany pursued a competitive grant from NYSERDA for funds to develop a net-zero energy master plan for the Uptown Campus. Phase 1 of that study mostly focused on decarbonization pathways for three typical building types—academic, science, residential—and developing baseline data.

UAlbany then performed an exercise: what if time, money, and logistics were no object? What if anything were possible? Based on the best available technology today, how low could the EUI go, and how much would it cost?

From that exercise, UAlbany created an “ideal scenario,” where any building could be gut-renovated, disruptions were of no consequence, and cost was no obstacle. This analysis helped UAlbany realize that it was theoretically possible to achieve the CLCPA target of 85% decarbonization across the campus.

Solutions Implemented

In reality, campus buildings are rarely unoccupied, and funding is typically scarce. Through their net-zero campus master plan, UAlbany determined that 60–70% of decarbonization was achievable on campus at half the cost, layering in changes as opportunities for deferred maintenance and building renewal arise.

In 2023, the New York State Legislature approved a $30 million appropriation for campus decarbonization measures at UAlbany. This funding will go toward a project that will set in motion a gradual transition across campus from high-temperature to low-temperature hot water.

The project will replace two gas-fired absorption chillers in the University’s 1960s-era central power plant on the Uptown Campus with a high-efficiency electric centrifugal chiller and heat-recovery chillers.

Additionally, the University is modifying domestic hot water systems in more than 25 buildings and installing new low-temperature hot water piping in the campus’ athletic facilities. These upgrades will allow the campus to shut down its gas-fired boilers during the summer months and use the new geothermal heat recovery chiller to meet cooling needs, as well as meet 100% of heating and domestic hot water loads during the summer. The new heat recovery chiller will also provide 100% of the heating, cooling, and domestic hot water to the newly renovated all-electric Physical Education building.

One of UAlbany’s approaches is using the existing high-temperature hot water piping to distribute low temperature hot water from the new heat recovery chillers during the summer months and switching back to fossil-fuel-fired high-temperature hot water heating when the campus heating loads increase. This allows the University to leverage existing infrastructure and still integrate it within the decarbonized pathway.

While there is no near-term plan to eliminate fossil fuels from the central plant altogether, since reliability is still needed for peak loads and backup, this new strategy enables UAlbany to achieve 85% decarbonization. The current set of projects is expected to reduce fossil fuel consumption on the Uptown Campus by more than 30%.

Timeline

• 2010: Liberty Terrace, a 184,500-square foot, 500-bed student apartment building off campus, is built with ground source heat pumps.
• 2019: New York enacts the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act
• 2022: New York Governor Kathy Hochul issues Executive Order 22
• 2021: UAlbany’s innovative lab building, ETEC, is constructed with geothermal heating and cooling and is the first all-electric net zero energy ready building on campus
• 2023: The New York State Legislature approves $30 million in funding for decarbonization measures at UAlbany
• 2025: UAlbany’s central plant is green-lit for upgrades to low-temperature hot water, which will enable the Physical Education building to become fully electrified using ground-source heat recovery chillers

Financing

The University at Albany got the green light to move forward with a $30 million appropriation from the New York State legislature’s 2023–2024 budget. The Net Zero master plan effort totaling $2.7 million, received $2 million in funding from NYSERDA’s Building Cleaner Communities Competition.