Furman University received a $2.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy that will allow the university to replace the aging HVAC heating and cooling system in the North Village student housing complex with an environmentally friendly and much more energy efficient geothermal heat pump system. The improvements will save the university more than $2 million in energy costs over the next 20 years and substantially reduce its carbon footprint.
Erskine College received $352,000 from the South Carolina Energy Office’s ConserFund loan program to conduct a campus-wide lighting retrofit, replacing lamps, ballasts and fixtures to reduce consumption, along with the addition of direct digital controls with energy management and building automation program control logic. These improvements will help the college save more than $69,000 annually. ConserFund is a low-interest revolving loan program for energy-efficiency improvements in state agencies, public colleges or universities, school districts, local governments and private nonprofit organizations state-wide.