The Brandeis Sustainable Energy Program aims to create an energy efficient campus that will cut utility costs and mitigate Brandeis' carbon footprint. According to the Campus Sustainability Initiative's website, the project will be completed within the next 16 months using five million dollars in funds appropriated by the Brandeis Board of Trustees.

The program involves replacing light fixtures and aging temperature control systems, as well as "performance optimization" of targeted buildings, which involves finding and remedying any inefficiency in a building's energy system. Buildings selected for the renovations include the Volen National Center for Complex Systems, Bernstein-Marcus Administration Building, Kutz Hall, Slosberg Music Center and Sherman Student Center and Hassenfeld Conference Center.

Sustainability Coordinator Janna Cohen-Rosenthal '03 talked about the Sustainable Energy Program in an email to the Justice. She explained why certain buildings were selected for upgrades: "It gets into the ‘guts' of a building and is fixing the heating/cooling and other systems. For the best return on [the] investment we have to focus on buildings that use the most energy per square foot."

The Board of Trustees budgeted five million dollars for the project. In an interview with BrandeisNOW, Cohen-Rosenthal predicts that just in the first year, the renovations will cut utilities costs by $540,000 and reduce carbon emissions by 1,614 metric tons of carbon equivalent. "The idea is to save money and carbon impact," she wrote to the Justice. The modifications will continue to cut costs and reduce carbon emissions with every year that they are in place.

When asked about the energy efficiency of old buildings like Shapiro Residence Hall and East Quad, Cohen-Rosenthal explained that they do not have carbon impacts as large as the targeted structures. "All of the sciences buildings and others targeted have mechanical systems that are very, very old and not working well," she stated.

Brandeis has partnered with GreenerU, a Waltham-based firm, to plan and execute the Sustainable Energy Program. According to the mission statement on its website, "GreenerU partners with colleges and their students to solve the campus sustainability and energy management challenges." Cohen-Rosenthal wrote, "We like this firm because they don't just look at the very quick cost savings but at the full picture of our environmental impact and long term goals and make sure we are doing the best quality job possible."

Cohen-Rosenthal acknowledged that Brandeis has progress to make in order to be as environmentally friendly as other universities. She called the work being done in the Sustainable Energy Program "deferred maintenance," the point of which is to fix outdated equipment and bring it up to efficiency standards.

"The technology being put in is avant-garde and will be the best for saving energy. It's not worth doing if we aren't doing it the best way possible," she wrote.