Hartford Business Journal

26 CONNECTICUT GREEN GUIDE • FALL 2016 www.CTGreenGuide.com UConn builds, acts green A t the state's flagship university, 2015 was a pretty green year. To start, UConn attained LEED Silver cer- tifications for three major construction projects and kicked off a five-year LED replacement program that's already saved over $73,000. Among the projects that attained LEED Silver were the Werth Family UConn Basketball Champions Center — a $40 million practice facility adjacent to Gampel Pavilion; the Wilfred B. Young Building, which houses classrooms and offices in the College of Agriculture, Health and Natu- ral Resources; and the Bousfield Psychology Building. UConn has 23 LEED-certified facilities at its main campus in Storrs, encompassing more than 2 million square feet. The school also installed low-flow water fixtures and aerators in all student residence halls and apartments — a part of its commitment to achieve net zero energy and water growth that's saved as much as 100,000 gal- lons of water per day. The relamping program has already tackled 31 build- ings. Among them is Gampel Pavilion, which held its first LED-powered event in 2015. The new lighting sys- tem allows for strobe effects, color changes and other effects not previously possible at the arena. In addition to its green construction efforts, in 2015, UConn also launched a bicycle-sharing program and the Green Campus Academic Network (GCAN), which has built on-campus demonstration projects like rain gardens and air-monitoring stations. The creation of GCAN ultimately led to a trip for a dozen students and six faculty and staff to the United Nations' 21st annual climate change conference in Paris late last year, where participating countries set the most ambitious greenhouse gas reduction goals in history. University of Connecticut PROJECT ELEMENTS: Facility-wide; energy & climate change; water; material management; innovation START DATE: Jan. 2015 COMPLETION DATE: Dec. 2015 UConn student volunteers promote recycling at a UConn basketball "green game day." PHOTO | CONTRIBUTED CATEGORY: Universities GreenCircle Sustainability Awards 2016

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