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Demand side management at Umeå University

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Countries

Sweden

Policy areas

Digital economy, research and innovationDigital GovernmentSustainable development

Organisation name Umeå University

Contact person: Lisa Redin

registrator@umu.se

Umeå University is committed to achieving the goal of the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals. To do so, the university management not only raised the profile of sustainable development in education and research, but decided to transform the building’s overall operations – including campuses – so they are smart, climate-friendly and sustainable.

To have a smarter and more sustainable utilisation of facilities or other resources, the university’s Property Management Office, together with the property owner Akademiska Hus AB, set up an analysis tool. This combines data from different sources, such as LoRaWAN sensors, HVAC devices, weather data and room booking data. By aggregating the data, new and improved types of analyses could be made, for example on actual usage and occupancy rates, status of indoor climate, unnecessary heat supply and electricity use.

The aim of this initiative was to integrate different monitoring and control systems to one platform to conduct more complex analyses and thereby improve the energy efficiency and facility usage beyond the existing systems. The project was scaled up to cover the entire campus of Umeå.

The surrounding community of Umeå University has shown great interest in the project, which began as an energy-saving project but has evolved into a sustainable management approach. The property owner of the university has implemented this approach to sustainable demand management at four other university facilities and the number keeps increasing. Furthermore, a webinar at national level was delivered to facility managers, hospitals and schools.

If all organisations can save 5% of the space used or reduce the need to build new facilities, the environmental impact at a national and European level is significant.

After the pilot phase, the project was scaled up to cover the entire Umeå Campus. Subsequently, the results of the project were disseminated to other universities in Sweden, which adopted the same solution.

The model that was developed is easily transferable to different contexts in the public and private sectors. Despite growing numbers of students and a new integration of a police academy, between 2013 and 2021 Umeå Campus was able to cut down the used area by 6%, corresponding to about 11,500 m2. Thanks to better visualisation and communication of actual occupancy, 40 lecture halls were transformed to accommodate other needs. Thanks to these measures, the calculated CO2 impact of avoiding the need to build new premises is estimated to be 1.3 million kg of CO2.

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