Analysis of MIT's past and future energy expenditure/

Abstract

With the current rate at which technology is advancing, MIT has to update and replace out-of-date facilities as well as add new ones to stay at the forefront of university research. As MIT continues to expand its facilities, the amount of energy required to run those facilities will also increase. An analysis of future energy usage allows for energy saving systems to be planned before the facilities are complete, and implementation can be started before the energy has been spent. This thesis will be such an analysis on the energy usage of MIT's current capital projects, as well as the historical trends of MIT's energy usage. Conclusions will be drawn on how much these facilities or renovations will increase the university's energy expenditure by comparing facilities that currently exist to ones that are still in planning. By comparing the EUI of planned capital projects to that of existing facilities, a range was found for each facility's energy usage. Using this data, it was found that MIT will see a change in purchased energy between -16.5% and 4.28% by 2030. The low energy estimate matches with MIT's claimed -15% by 2030. The high energy estimate does not match, and shows that the rate at which MIT is currently expanding is not sustainable until 2030.