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nized by the American College & Univer-
sity Presidents’ Climate Commitment. In
October, the organization presented Ball
State with its 2010 Second Nature Climate
Leadership Award, given to higher educa-
tion institutions that are shifting behavior
on campus and within communities to
make a low-carbon economy possible.
DCO Energy to Build CHCP
Project in Atlantic City
DCO Energy LLC has signed an engineering, procurement and construction
agreement with ACB Energy Partners to
design and construct a combined heating,
cooling and power (CHCP) project at the
Marina Thermal Facility in Atlantic City, N.J.
The CHCP plant will be an addition to the
Marina Thermal Facility, which provides
heating, cooling and electric services to the
Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa and the Water
Club. The project will reduce carbon dioxide
emissions by 16,000 tons per year – comparable to removing 3,000 cars from the road.
The plant will be operational in early 2011.
DCO Energy President Frank DiCola said the
CHCP project “will break new ground in
clean energy for the gaming industry.”
Texas A&M Awarded
$10 Million Grant for
CHP System
Texas A&M University has been
awarded a $10 million grant by the U.S.
Department of Energy to help fund a new
combined heat and power system to serve
the institution’s 5,200-acre campus. The
new CHP generation equipment is being
installed at the university’s central utility
plant and is scheduled to be operational by
August 2011, replacing generation equipment that was beyond its useful life.
The federal grant will facilitate construction of the $70.25 million CHP project,
which will allow the university to provide
up to 50 MW of reliable power generation
while reducing overall energy consumption
and greenhouse gas emissions. The grant to
Texas A&M was one of only nine awarded in
a competitive nationwide pool that attracted
more than 400 funding applications.
Overall energy consumption on campus has been reduced by 23 percent over
the past eight years despite an increase
of 18 percent in the gross square footage
of facilities served. The reduction in total
energy consumption means that the university is now consuming 35 percent less
energy than it was nine years ago, when
calculated on a basis of consumption per
square foot. Since 2002, energy efficiency
improvements and conservation at Texas
A&M have resulted in cost avoidance
totaling more than $106 million, and campus building space has increased from
18. 5 million to 22 million gross sq ft.
WSU Gets Funding for
Cooling System Upgrade
Washington State University (WSU)
in Pullman, Wash., has been awarded
$1,412,261 in state grant funds to assist
with energy- and cost-saving building
improvement projects. With the new funding, WSU will upgrade the chilled-water
cooling system at the Information Technology Building as well as provide a closed-vessel compost system at its compost facility.
The IT building server rooms are critical
to campus operations but are cooled by
chiller units that are now more than 30
years old. The campus has a district chilled-water system that provides chilled water at
a much lower cost and higher reliability.
This project will upgrade the present IT
building connection to the district chilled-water system.
The benefits of the building improvements will include increased IT reliability,
increased composting options and a reduction in the campus carbon footprint by
650 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. The campus will also see annual energy
savings of 1 million k Wh of electricity and
38,880 therms of natural gas.
The state grant was part of more than
$31 million in funding awarded to 45 public
school facilities by Gov. Chris Gregoire and
the Washington State Department of
Commerce for projects that will create jobs
and energy cost savings. The total cost of
these projects is almost $88 million, includ-
ing more than $52 million of nonstate
funding. This construction spending will
create an estimated 870 jobs.
FERC Clarifies California
Feed-In Tariff Procedures
In a ruling Oct. 21, the Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission (FERC) clarified for
California how the state can encourage
development of new electricity generation
resources in a way that does not conflict
with federal laws and regulations. The ruling
sets a national precedent and effectively
clears the way for other states to adopt feed-in tariffs. In the action, FERC further clarified
for the California Public Utilities Commission
(CPUC) and the state’s three investor-owned
utilities its July 2010 order that outlined how
the state could implement its feed-in tariff.
Feed-in tariffs typically are designed to
encourage certain types of generation
resources by offering a guaranteed purchase
price for electricity generated from those
resources under a long-term contract.
California adopted a feed-in tariff by
enacting the California Waste Heat and
Carbon Emissions Reduction Act (AB
1613). That state law requires investor-owned electric utilities to purchase, at a
price set by the CPUC, electricity generated by eligible combined heat and power
generators. In the action, FERC said a
proposal to employ a multi-tiered resource
approach for determining avoided costs,
which would set different levels of avoided
costs and thus different avoided cost rate
caps for different types of resources, could
comply with the Public Utility Regulatory
Policies Act and FERC regulations.
Shetlands Islands System
Receives Environmental
Award
As reported Oct. 5 in The Shetland
News, the Shetland Islands Council in the
United Kingdom has received a prestigious
award for its combined heat and power
system in Lerwick. The council won in the
environmental category of the 2010 SELECT
Electrotechnical Awards, presented at a
ceremony in Glasgow that brought together
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