Stanford and Cornell Offer Novel Environmental Plans for N.Y.C. Campus.

ORIGINAL: NYTimes
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
Published: October 23, 2011

Environmental Features in Science Campus Plans 

An artist's rendering of Cornell University's proposal for a graduate school on Roosevelt Island.Photo illustration by Cornell University, photograph by Getty Images

If Cornell University were to win the city’s competition to build a new science graduate school, it would install on Roosevelt Island almost four acres of solar panels, 500 geothermal wells, and buildings with the rare distinction of generating as much power as they use.

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Stanford University’s proposal for the island calls for minimizing energy use, creating a marsh to filter water, and recycling water from storm runoff and sinks, and possibly from toilets as well.

Aerial view of the preliminary, proposed design for
the StanfordNYC applied sciences campus on Roosevelt Island.
Stanford University / Ennead Architects; Image by Redsquare, Inc.

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In an expansion under way in West Harlem that would house Columbia’s proposed graduate school, the university is recycling more than 90 percent of the material in buildings it is demolishing, and taking unusual steps to minimize construction pollution.

The Bloomberg administration’s contest to create a school of applied sciences sets high environmental standards, but some competing universities are going much further to out-green one another.

As the Oct. 28 deadline for proposals was approaching, several of the top contenders discussed their environmental plans as part of a public relations war intended to impress city officials who will decide which institution wins up to $400 million in land and infrastructure improvements.

Stanford and Cornell, vying for the same city-owned site on what some involved in the process have begun to call Silicon Island, are widely seen as the universities to beat.

Their plans are far grander — two million square feet of space to be built over a generation with price tags of over $1 billion — and they have proposed more ambitious plans to incorporate innovative environmental measures.

Cornell officials said their campus would generate up to 1.8 megawatts of power, enough to supply 1,400 American homes, with elements like fuel cells and the city’s biggest solar array.

Two major academic buildings, out of 10 planned structures, would meet a “net zero energy” standard, meaning that on average, they would consume no more electricity than they produce. On hot days, when demand is highest, they would actually generate excess power and feed it into the grid.

Very few large structures meet that standard, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, a federal agency, and Cornell plans to go a step more: The buildings would be energy-neutral even taking into account all the devices plugged into outlets inside.

“From an architectural and sustainability point of view, we’re entering some pretty novel territory,” said Kent Kleinman, dean of Cornell’s architecture school, who contributed to the plan.

Stanford and Cornell both propose to take advantage of the steady temperature deep underground, using it to cool air in summer and heat it in winter.

Cornell’s geothermal wells, circulating water through pipes, would make up the largest system of its kind in the region, university officials said.

Stanford would use ground-source heat pumps that store and release heat without water.

Cornell, hoping to gain a strategic advantage in the increasingly intense competition, shared far more of its plans than other applicants, including architectural drawings.

Stanford’s renewable energy plans seem less specific: Officials said that the proposal would make extensive use of solar and geothermal power, but that they could not give figures on either, and that other innovations were considered possible but not definite.

Stanford’s stated goal is to use 50 percent less energy, and generate 80 percent less in greenhouse gases, than the efficiency standards set by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers.

“We’ll look at three or four different combinations of solutions to meet that, and determine how to go,” Laura Goldstein, Stanford’s director of project management, said.

“A new campus is a big opportunity to look at campus-wide systems, to showcase technologies.”

Whatever the approach, she said, the New York project would be greener than anything on Stanford’s California campus, where several buildings have won environmental design awards.

Cornell said that its buildings would use 40 percent less energy than the engineers’ society standard — somewhat higher consumption than Stanford’s goal — but that the campus would generate so much clean energy that its demands on the grid would be 75 percent below the standard.

Both Cornell and Stanford promise to include extensive measures to capture and reuse rainfall, including green roofs — some of Cornell’s structures would be almost entirely hidden under landscaping — as well as recycling “gray water” that usually goes into storm drains.

But Stanford takes the unusual steps of proposing to build a wetland to filter runoff naturally, and to recycle “black water” from toilets, if it is feasible.

The graduate school would also be connected to a Roosevelt Island system that collects garbage by sucking it through tubes at high speed.

Each university also mentions exploring experimental technology, like using the East River for heat exchange, or harnessing tidal energy.

Both universities say their buildings would be aligned to maximize sun exposure and natural ventilation.

Cornell’s drawings show structures of various sizes, with rooflines and other surfaces tilted to catch sunlight.

Both plans would also provide ample open space to the public and gardens for cultivation.

But officials at competing universities cautioned against taking the ambitious plans of Cornell and Stanford at face value, if only because of cost. They spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying it would appear unseemly to criticize a competitor’s plans.

“It’s already so expensive to build in New York City, and this stuff adds more,” one said. “It could all change in negotiations with the city, or as the technology evolves.”

Columbia and a coalition led by New York University want to build in more urban settings, hemmed in by roads, subways and buildings, with less flexibility and space for parks or solar panels.

But Columbia is already going beyond required environmental requirements in an enormous expansion in West Harlem, where construction began a year ago, and where the university proposes to incorporate a new science school.

Using low-sulfur fuel and particulate filters, the cranes and trucks working on the project do not belch visible exhaust. Each vehicle leaving the site is sprayed from below by water jets, to keep it from trailing dirt and dust. The school is splitting a major wastewater pipe under the site into a separate sewer and a storm drain, to reduce the risk of sewage overflows.

N.Y.U. wants to acquire the old New York City Transit headquarters in Downtown Brooklyn and overhaul it inside and out. John H. Beckman, a university vice president, said such renovation could be environmentally preferable to demolition and new construction.

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