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Chronicle
Star Power
By Susannah Cassedy O’Donnell
These days, some museums are reaching for the stars in a new way—by striving to meet the U.S. government’s Energy Star Challenge.
For nearly two decades, environmentally savvy consumers have sought products from computers to home appliances with an Energy Star rating that signifies energy efficiency. The Energy Star program—jointly run by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Department of Energy—has gradually expanded to include entire buildings. Now the program has introduced an array of new resources for the “entertainment industry,” a category that includes not only stadiums and theaters but museums. While museums are not eligible to receive an Energy Star label like such other facilities as offices and hotels, they can still use the program’s online tools and resources to improve their energy efficiency and decrease their greenhouse gas emissions. A museum that improves its energy efficiency by 10 percent has met the Energy Star Challenge—a national call-to-action for organizations to benchmark and reduce their energy consumption.
With the launch of its entertainment-sector program this past summer, the Energy Star program is urging facilities that welcome visitors and travelers to proactively fight global climate change. According to the EPA, such places spend approximately $4.6 billion a year on energy. Those who want to reduce their energy usage, utility bills and carbon footprint can find information on measuring and tracking energy use, energy efficiency upgrades and promoting energy efficiency on the Energy Star website. The EPA’s online portfolio manager allows institutions to benchmark energy use, see an associated estimate of their greenhouse gas emissions, track water consumption and set energy reduction goals. The Energy Star program encourages the entertainment sector to consider the public relations benefits of such green practices, noting that people are “increasingly concerned with the environmental impact” of the locations they visit.
So far, 11 museums have taken the Energy Star Challenge or become Energy Star partners, signifying that they have formally committed to a number of energy-tracking and consumption-reduction steps including—as of 2007—support of the challenge. These institutions range from those with living collections like the Chicago Botanic Garden and the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, Calif., to the Phoenix Art Museum and Atlanta’s Woodruff Arts Center, to San Diego’s Reuben H. Fleet Science Center and the Imagination Station Science Museum in Wilson, N.C. Such museums have taken measures like modifying their HVAC systems and boilers, replacing light bulbs with energy-efficient versions and installing occupancy sensors. The Energy Star program has also launched webinars for the entertainment sector, and more than 50 museums have participated since February 2009.
In April 2008, the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) became the first fine art museum to become an Energy Star partner. Beginning in early 2006, IMA started looking at ways to reduce its energy consumption, says Director of Public Affairs Katie Zarich. Using an engineering-based approach, the museum analyzed the function of its boilers and HVAC system and hired consultants who tested different equipment settings while carefully monitoring temperature and humidity conditions. Staff made adjustments accordingly, stepped up preventive maintenance and decreased treatment of outside air during temperate times of the year. The museum has also replaced standard bulbs with more energy-efficient, longer-lasting versions in areas where artwork is not displayed and stored. As a result of such changes, IMA has reduced its natural gas consumption by 48 percent and its electricity consumption by 19 percent.
Zarich explains that IMA met the Energy Star Challenge not by following the program’s suggested procedures but by pursuing a broad sustainability initiative that produced the results EPA is seeking. “We see ourselves not only as stewards of our collection but of the environment,” she says. A “greening committee” has helped encourage a wide range of efforts, from reducing paper use to recycling exhibition components to encouraging staffers to turn off lights when they leave the room and power down computers at the workday’s end. For its sustained energy improvement activities, IMA received special recognition in March 2009 at the EPA’s Partner of the Year ceremony. It was the only “entertainment facility,” as classified by the EPA, to receive this honor.
In the case of the North Carolina Aquarium at Fort Fisher, the impetus for improving energy efficiency came from the North Carolina State Energy Office’s Utility Savings Initiative (USI). This program, started in 2002, aims to reduce costs and resource use in public buildings—a category that includes all three aquariums run by the state. As part of this effort, the energy office also participated in the Energy Star Challenge. The Fort Fisher facility had to submit energy and water-consumption figures every year to the state government and began to look at how it could change its energy-using activities.
“We realized considerable savings” as a result, says Building Superintendent Tom Coit. At one time, he says, the “boiler basically ran wild,” guzzling some 14,000 gallons of fuel oil every year. Installing a timer and an outdoor reset device cut the boiler’s fuel consumption by more than half. The aquarium also installed descaling devices to lessen the need for flushing out calcium-laden water in the air conditioning system and began using cisterns for in-house irrigation. “Staff members are all on board with this thing,” says Coit, noting that they turn off lights in unoccupied rooms and report leaks promptly.
The aquarium needed to make energy-saving changes without adversely affecting its collection of local Cape Fear freshwater and seawater creatures. Increasing the amount of time between water changes in exhibit tanks—necessary to filter out sand and other debris—has not caused a problem for the facility’s living collections, Coit says.
All this hard work paid off for the aquarium, which responded successfully to the Energy Star Challenge in 2006 when it reduced its annual energy use by 23 percent. Out of 12,300 state-owned buildings included in North Carolina’s USI, the aquarium came in second. They were, Coit says, “the cream of the crop.”
Susannah Cassedy O’Donnell is a contributing editor to Museum. |
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