Conference Agenda

Downtown Seattle office buildings face mounting pressure from the Building Emissions Performance Standard (BEPS) while also grappling with high vacancy rates. This UW capstone project evaluates small data centers (typically <5 MW) as a dual-purpose decarbonization strategy: repurposing underutilized office floors to generate compute revenue while recovering waste heat to displace fossil fuel heating. Student teams analyzed two building typologies — a standalone office building and an office-to-multifamily district energy scenario — completing heating load profiles, electrical capacity assessments, mechanical and electrical system designs, and a comparative business case against a conventional air-to-water heat pump baseline. The work quantifies carbon impacts relative to BEPS and Washington Clean Buildings Performance Standard compliance thresholds and explores scalability across urban cores. Results demonstrate how distributed data center infrastructure can simultaneously address office vacancy, heating decarbonization, and grid resilience.

Museums present a largely untapped opportunity for grid harmonization: their strict environmental requirements — typically ±2°F temperature and ±5% relative humidity — have historically excluded them from demand response programs. This Seattle University capstone team used McKinstry's existing LEED energy model for the new Seattle University Museum of Art (SUMA), a project targeting LEED Gold certification, to develop and test demand response strategies that maintain conservation-grade conditions. Measures evaluated include battery energy storage, phase change materials, and active HVAC controls sequencing. Each strategy was assessed against the LEED v4.1 Grid Harmonization credit framework and quantified using hourly grid carbon emissions data from Seattle City Light. Successful strategies are being integrated into SUMA's building control sequences, making student-driven research a direct contributor to both LEED documentation and the museum's long-term sustainability story.

Colorado College has reduced campus greenhouse gas emissions 75% since 2008, achieving carbon neutrality in 2020 through renewable energy procurement. Reaching its next target — a 50% reduction in Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2035 — requires replacing the campus's fossil fuel-fired high-temperature hot water central plant and phasing out standalone gas systems across a 2.5-million-square-foot portfolio. A Colorado College student, hired through McKinstry's B.L.U.E. internship program, contributed directly to developing the Campus Energy Master Plan during the synthesis phase, supporting technical pathway development, stakeholder communications, and roadmap documentation. The plan evaluates geothermal central plant configurations, building-level electrification sequencing, electrical infrastructure impacts, renewable energy integration, and phased funding strategies including Inflation Reduction Act incentives — providing an actionable, costed decarbonization roadmap aligned with institutional capital planning cycles.