Robert Barker/University Photography

Jim Obrien, general foreman at the university's Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning and Refrigeration (HVACR) shop, adjusts the newly installed direct digital control panel in Snee Hall. The system makes ventilation systems quicker and more responsive to environmental changes.

At home we are just beginning to feel it. But the higher electric energy prices have been socking Cornell hard since July -- and no one expects them to relent until next spring at the earliest. Accordingly, the university administration has announced an increase in campus electric rates, the second this year.

"It's going to be a rough winter," says Jim Adams, director of Cornell's Department of Utilities and Energy Management.

And not just for him. More money going to power and heating fuel bills means less for research, graduate students and staff positions. An estimate has the university's total energy bill rising to $30 million this year, up from about $20 million just two years ago.

It sounds gloomy. But it doesn't have to be.

Adams' department has been leading the charge to make campus buildings more energy efficient -- and winning a long string of awards along the way. (Of the university's energy use, about 50 percent goes to laboratory facilities, 40 percent to office and teaching buildings, and 10 percent to residential buildings.) Recent initiatives have reduced use of electricity for lighting, for example, by 30 percent, and Lake Source Cooling has reduced the campus central cooling energy use by 87 percent. Heating and cooling conservation maintenance and projects are also creating worthy results, with savings from 10 to 30 percent.

"The whole driving key is energy savings," says Jim Obrien, a general foreman at the university's Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning and Refrigeration (HVACR) shop. Obrien always has at least one energy conservation project in the works -- from installing direct digital controls with occupancy sensors to devising ways to separate a building into zones to save energy. Of all the work his shop does, he says, those projects are the most rewarding. "[The shop workers] really have faith in what they're doing," he says. "Being able to save some energy -- that's a really good motivator. And the project sponsorship and appreciation from the Utilities and Energy Management department has really helped."

But no matter how efficient Obrien's team makes a building, occupants have a part to play as well.

"People really need to step up and take ownership, like you take ownership at home," says Obrien.

For inspiration, consider the difference individuals made in response to the first campuswide campaign to reduce energy consumption over the 2001 winter break. The results, tracked in a graph hanging in the Humphreys Service Building, show a striking difference in energy use compared with the same period a year earlier: Electric energy use dropped by 350,000 kilowatt-hours, for a savings of approximately $35,000. That was the equivalent of 13,000 computer monitors or 21,000 two-lamp fluorescent light fixtures turned off.

Over the 2002 winter break, the reduction doubled -- to about 700,000 fewer kilowatt-hours used. The reduction remained steady in 2003 and 2004.

"It's very dramatic," says W.S. (Lanny) Joyce, a manager in the Utilities and Energy Management department. "We're hoping to do even better this year." But even more, he says, he hopes the message carries over well beyond break.

"Take what we do each holiday break, and do it all year long," says Joyce. "Focus on things that are plugged into the wall."

If you are replacing or supplementing office or lab equipment, try to buy energy-efficient products. If your workstation is too cold, notify Customer Service (255-5322) instead of using a space heater. And whether it is a computer, overhead light, coffee maker, copy machine or research equipment -- if you're not using it, Joyce says, "it's always better to turn it off."

As energy costs soar, the Cornell campus is facing a winter of challenge. This is the second in a series of stories the Chronicle will present showing the extent of these rising costs and describing how the Cornell community can help keep them under control.