Cornell University's Lake Source Cooling (LSC) project has been honored with an Award of Special Recognition and Merit from the Ecological Society of America (ESA).

The society cited the engineers in the Department of Utilities and Energy Management at Cornell for "extraordinary vision and effort in proposing and carrying through to realization a major contribution to the wise sustainable use of a renewable natural resource."

This special award is given only when highly unusual projects are brought to the society's attention, according to the ESA's award committee. Representatives from the Department of Utilities and Energy Management will accept the award plaque on behalf of Cornell at the ESA's annual meeting Aug. 8 in Tucson, Ariz.

The ESA, founded in 1915, is one of the oldest scientific societies in the United States. It currently has 7,800 members and publishes Ecology , one of the most often cited professional journals in this field.

LSC, which was launched in 1994 and began operating in July 2000, uses cold water from Cayuga Lake to cool a closed-loop water supply that is pumped to the Cornell campus and circulated to cool campus buildings. The project replaced an aging system of huge water refrigerating machines known as chillers. The system uses 86 percent less electrical energy than the chillers it replaced, thus reducing the amount of fossil fuels burned and the amount of pollution released into the atmosphere by regional electric generating plants. The LSC system also eliminates the need for ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbon refrigerants or their replacements. According to Cornell engineers, the cooling project eliminates the need for over 20 million kilowatt hours per year to be generated by regional electric power plants, or enough power to serve 2,500 homes, while preserving and protecting Cayuga Lake.

Last year, LSC was honored as outstanding by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers, the Association of Energy Engineers, the New York State Society of Professional Engineers and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).