By Kimmy Nevas
As the temperature falls and oil prices remain high, Northeastern is feeling the chill. With classrooms, offices and residence halls to heat this winter, high gas prices are adding up, and the price of crude oil, hovering at more than $60 per barrel, is not falling anytime soon.
As mounting prices place strain on Northeastern’s budget, university officials are urging students, staff and faculty to conserve both heat and electrical energy by keeping windows closed, setting thermostats lower and turning off lights in unoccupied rooms.
Many campus offices and classroom buildings are equipped with automated systems that perform “night set-backs,” said Assistant Utilities Manager Joseph Ranahan.
During a building’s unoccupied hours, the temperature setting lowers.
“We may try to start the set-backs a little earlier and set them a little lower,” Ranahan said. “A couple degrees over a large area can create significant savings.”
The school watches energy markets closely to develop a strategy to purchase fuel when prices are at their lowest, Ranahan said. Northeastern has taken two approaches to fuel shopping: buying at the daily market price and locking in a price for a given length of time. Both strategies involve a large amount of research before a decision is made, Ranahan said.
“Our goal is maximize our value while we minimize our exposure to market upswings,” he said.
Although Ranahan said he cannot release the amount of money Northeastern spends on gas and electricity, he said the university used about 80,955,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity during fiscal year 2005, and about 590,434,000 British thermal units of gasoline during that same time period.
Based on a price average from the past year, provided by the Energy Information Administration (EIA), the cost of electricity for fiscal year 2005 was about $9.8 million. Based on current gasoline prices in Massachusetts, also from the EIA, the price of gas for the year would be about $12.7 million.
The amount of money spent heating campus buildings in the winter is less than what the university spends on cooling in the summer, Ranahan said. Northeastern’s cooling systems use steam absorption chillers which use energy from steam produced by a steam plant to cool the buildings. Steam is also used to heat water in residence halls and campus kitchens.
Faced with utility bills, students living off campus who don’t have heat and electricity worked into their rents will have high prices to worry about. Andrea Coyne, a senior physical therapy major who lives in Dorchester, said she anticipates a higher bill this year.
“We’re on a budget. We pay $180 per month for heating. I have three jobs and already have a loan out, too,” Coyne said.
Despite university efforts to conserve energy, some classroom buildings remain lit at night, even when empty. Ranahan said this highlights the importance of students and faculty taking responsibility for turning out the lights at the end of the day.
Residence halls account for about 30 percent of energy consumption, Ranahan said. Some students say oil could be saved if residence halls were kept a bit cooler in the winter.
“If they want to save energy they should turn down the heat in the freshmen dorms. I had my windows open all last winter,” said Mark Anderson, a sophomore engineering major.
