"The university is very clear about its goals," says Tracey. "With CECB, you can see it in the way that terra-cotta rain screens will provide exterior shading for 80% of the glazing while complementing the fabric of surrounding buildings. Separating skin and weather barrier will help us in our goal of achieving an R-30 thermal envelope for enhanced energy performance."

"They look for reasonable paybacks on their systems," says Parry. His firm is the mechanical engineer for CECB as well as for an $80-million restoration of Champaign's 100-year-old Lincoln Hall, a project begun in 2009, and a new $78-million residence hall called Eikenberry Commons 3. The latter is the most recent project to emerge from a multiyear initiative to replace all student housing in Champaign. "They don't chase LEED points for the sake of chasing LEED points. They're more concerned with doing what makes sense than hanging a plaque on a wall," he says.

A Nobel Marks a New Era

Johnston recalls an event she believes helped shape university policy: In 2007, Donald J. Wuebbles, a professor with the departments of atmospheric sciences and electrical and computer engineering, shared the Nobel Peace Prize for his work with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

A year later, Richard H. Herman, then university chancellor, was serving on a steering committee to address energy and sustainability issues for the Bush administration's Presidential Council of Advisors on Science and Technology when he pledged to develop a plan for achieving carbon neutrality by signing the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment. University of Illinois was the first Big 10 school to join the program, which targets carbon neutrality at U.S. colleges and universities.

It was during the same period that the school's facilities and services department appointed Tom Abram as its sustainability coordinator. During his tenure, "Tom really changed the way design teams approached university projects," says Parry. "With Lincoln Hall, he would tell us, 'Rather than see where the project winds up, let's design sustainability into it.' It was the difference between an active and passive approach." Project managers in facilities and services began to follow Abram's lead, Parry says.

In 2010, after conferring with students, faculty, staff and town residents, the university issued a Climate Action Plan whose "conserve-and-load" approach called for construction of energy-efficient, de-carbonizing generation systems and the addition of renewable energy sources. Among other objectives, the 11-point plan also requires that "new construction and major renovation projects demonstrate at least a 30% improvement in building energy performance over the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) 90.1 standards (latest year) for total building energy use."

"It's a very developed set of standards," says Parry, who believes the evolution of university policy is perhaps best evinced in Eikenberry Commons. "Phase 1 didn't incorporate heat recovery, but Phase 2 did. Now, with Phase 3, we'll be recovering heat from the chilled-water system."

Planners currently are at work introducing renewable energy to the campus. Having tried—and failed—to adopt wind energy, Johnston and her colleagues recently issued a RFP to develop a 3-MW to 10-MW solar farm on the south end of campus. "We've designated 285 acres for the project," Johnston says.

The university also has launched a retro-commissioning program that evaluates the HVAC systems of its buildings while introducing energy recovery wheels to them. "We're achieving savings of about 26% per building," Johnston says. "For us, it's about showing students how to incorporate sustainability into daily life, from net-zero design to turning off the water when you've finished brushing your teeth."