As promised in this post, here is Dave McFarlane’s full expert opinion about the current energy efficiency (or lack thereof) in the Grand Forks Public Library:
By Dave McFarlane
About four years ago, our company started working with the City of Grand Forks in a process to evaluate energy efficiencies in public buildings. The library was one of the 30 or 40 buildings we looked at, and it turned out that it was one of the top five most inefficient buildings in the city.
Earlier this month, the Library Board asked us to review the energy usage in the building and give our professional opinion regarding efficiency levels. So, we’ve studied the library’s energy bills from the last three years and we’ve made comparisons with buildings of similar size and occupancy in the region. With this information, we are able to determine how much energy per square foot the building is using and calculate exactly how much the library is spending above and beyond normal expectations.
The end result is the Energy Analysis Report we are releasing today. As expected, the energy usage at our Public Library is extreme. It’s significantly higher than it should be. Our analysis indicates that the library complex is using 58% more energy than recommended by the Environmental Protection Agency for a building of similar occupancy within the North Dakota region. That inefficiency results in annual energy costs that are $22,500 higher than necessary.
It’s important to remember that the Grand Forks Public Library was built in 1972, and that was a time when energy was very inexpensive. It was so inexpensive that Northern States Power Company was running an ad campaign that proclaimed, “Electricity is penny-cheap at NSP.” At that time, NSP used Reddy Kilowatt as their cartoon spokesperson. You might remember that his arms and legs were made of lightning bolts and his nose was a light bulb.
Since energy was so inexpensive in the early 1970s, it wasn’t a priority to conserve, and there were no building design initiatives that concentrated on energy efficiency. The design professionals at that time did not concentrate on energy usage – electric, gas or anything. Because of that, the system that was originally installed in our library was a very inefficient one, and after all these years, it has become one of the most inefficient buildings the City owns.
The library building is almost 40 years old, and these types of systems have life expectancies of 25-30 years. Mechanical equipment, by its nature, is going to wear out. It’s not unusual that the library’s system is failing or that the maintenance staff has been replacing components several times a year. This gets to be a very expensive ongoing upkeep for the library administration. It is also a precariously unreliable system.
The question now is, “How do we fix it?” Results from our Energy Analysis certainly lend credence to the need to redo the entire system. The cost to retrofit the library would be significant. We would need to gut the building and basically start over. It would mean shutting down the library for a year; removing all ceilings and some walls, removing the air handling systems and starting over.
Energy inefficiencies alone do not justify the construction of a new library. However, a failing mechanical system is a very expensive component in a public building, so we need to carefully consider whether it is a wise decision to make that investment in a 40-year-old building that has serious space deficiencies.
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