Sustainable design is a sustainability category (along with green energy, waste practices, etc…) that discusses ways to design buildings that lead to lower energy usage. This practice can go one step further even, to collect rainwater to make potable water and design windows that completely insulate from the sun’s heat while also letting in as much light as possible. At Macalester, we can look at sustainable design through many different lenses. The past gives us a glimpse of when sustainable design started becoming a care of Macalester. The present provides us with a view of how and where Macalester is focusing on sustainable design on campus. Finally, we can look towards the future and brainstorm how Macalester can be better in this field and fully invest in sustainability. We can look through archived Mac Weekly articles to see differing investments in Macalester's sustainable design. For the present, we will talk with facilities and the sustainability office to better understand what Macalester does every day to uphold its sustainability goals. We can also discuss Markim Hall and its LEED Platinum rating. LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design and is a rating system that takes into account many different factors of buildings and provides each building with a rating of bronze, silver, gold, or platinum. This rating is designated by the US Green Building Council (USGBC) and it is nationally recognized. LEED started to be developed in 1993, promoted by scientists who wanted solar panels to be installed widely across the world. LEED was first launched in 2000 and since its conception, there has been criticism of its rating system. We will discuss this criticism in the next paragraph. We will delve into the topics above and then discuss how Macalester can do better in this field and how students at Macalester can be more energy conscious and work with facilities to make Macalester a more sustainable campus. 

Before we discuss sustainable design it is important to paint a picture of the LEED award as an organization. These awards are no doubt a good way to encourage designers to incorporate sustainable design practices into their buildings, but the ratings system does have its flaws. Firstly, LEED is a design award and not a performance award. No matter how the building saves energy in the future or how it might fail on this front, if the initial design is to LEED standards then it has succeeded. There are many LEED points that LEED to a total score which then earns the LEED rating. A lot of these points are not specifically green design based, they can be about designing educational spaces a certain way to be more community oriented. While this is a good thing, designers might opt to go for these points rather than designing their building to be more environmentally friendly and still earn LEED certification. The main issue (which is being addressed) is how LEED does not differentiate between geographical locations. A building that is better suited to keep in heat would receive the same amount of credit if it was in Antarctica or if it was in southern California, even though heat retention in Antarctica is most important. Design based on local climate is the best way to ensure a building's sustainability, and LEED does not account for this leading to investments in things that do not help individual buildings so that they may gain a LEED point. All of this comes together to form a nationally recognized ratings system that is controversial in practice and that is also being constantly adjusted each year to better rate these buildings. Now we can accurately discuss Markim Hall and its LEED platinum rating. 

Within past Mac Weekly articles, we can see Macalester first started truly caring about sustainable design when they constructed Markim Hall in 2009. Bruner/Cott & Associates, Inc. of Cambridge, Mass. was the architect and McGough Companies of St. Paul, Minn. constructed the building. Markim was the first higher education building in Minnesota to receive a LEED Platinum rating (it was built specifically for this purpose). Markim Hall won a Building of America award and was featured in an edition of Green Building of America-Midwest Green edition publication. This rating system is specifically designed to award buildings that save money, lower carbon emissions, and improve efficiency. Macalester actually has tracked their money savings from 1994-2019 due to sustainability-related issues as shown in the image above. Within environmental justice, we discuss self-reliant communities that are small hubs that do not require help from outside agencies. These LEED platinum ratings are given to buildings that can be self-reliant in making their energy. LEED points are given based on issues that “address carbon, energy, water, waste, transportation, materials, health, and indoor environmental quality.” (USGBC). This is shown in Macalester’s self-reported data on Markim Hall. Markim uses 80% less energy than a typical Minnesota campus building, it reduces overall water consumption by 45%, its roof reflects 76% of sunlight, and a quarter of its overall energy consumption is supplied by its solar panels. LEED ratings are important indicators of the contribution of the building to the community it resides in, but not in an easily apparent way. Rather LEED addresses how much a building can reside in a community and go unnoticed due to its low waste and efforts to prioritize local plant life. According to the USGBC website, 20% of the rating credits directly impact human health, 15% impact water resources, 35% impact climate change, 10% of the credits affect biodiversity, 10% of the credits relate to the green economy, 5% of the credits impact community and 5% of the credits impact natural resources. LEED platinum buildings need to accumulate a majority of these credits to be designated LEED platinum. The impact on the community from LEED-rated buildings is why it is important to Environmental Justice (EJ). We discuss how EJ is multi-disciplinary and draws from multiple fields all to show how climate change, waste sites, water treatment, and more, all disproportionately hurt communities from lower wealth backgrounds as well as people of color. 

In talking with Professor Christie Manning of the Environmental Studies department it was apparent the issues that the Sustainability Office at Macalester is facing. Professor Manning described a department lacking in human power due to the pandemic. Links on the website do not work, and other links designate you to a “Content coming soon” page. This site contains links that are important to sustainable design such as building construction and building operations. The site also has comprehensive data, but only through 2019. Professor Manning said that a lot of this data was particularly interesting due to the pandemic and once again it had not been calculated due to the lack of human hours put into the Sustainability Office. Another issue with work in the sustainability office has been the slow implementation of the new administration. Many staff-faculty transitions have been happening, including professor Manning herself who worked in the sustainability office and now is back to being a professor. Just recently the sustainability office welcomed a new director Megan Butler, she started in January 2022. These issues have lead to a backup in information and advancement within the sustainability office. 

I also spoke to Nathan Lief of Facility Services. We discussed his work with the strategic planning committee and how they are choosing to tackle the problem of sustainable design at Macalester through “Imagine, Macalester, 2022-2030”. Facilities recently sent out a survey open to anyone asking for opinions on what buildings should be focused on for remodeling/redesigning. The results of this survey showed students wished for a full remodeling of the dorms, while faculty and staff focused more on academic buildings. Heating within the dorms is especially inefficient due to the radiator turn valve systems that were installed in the 1960s. This could mean the possibility of a new dorm on campus for Macalester students. Nathan described the plan of housing students in this dorm and then not housing students in a different dorm, say Kirk for example. This would allow facilities a sufficient amount of time to gut the dorms one by one to install more energy-efficient, and modernized heating and cooling systems. Nathan Lief also described how Macalester has hired architects to look at various buildings around campus and even discuss the possibility of making a new building. This building would prioritize sustainable design or the remodeling of a building would work to make it more energy efficient and to better suit the needs of the Macalester student body. Professor Manning also touched on this topic by talking about Olin Rice and saying that the building houses so many classrooms and labs, but it does not do everything that certain science departments require. 

Macalester has also partnered with Knutson Construction to create a 3-D rendering of the entire college campus. Knutson will use a drone to take thousands of images of the campus to create this rendering. Nathan Lief also said that these drones will use thermal imaging systems to find weaknesses in the building's ability to retain heat. Nathan said that this modeling will most likely not find anything major, but they expect to find places around campus that require repair and will in turn divert a significant amount of wasted energy. Overall Macalester facilities is working hard to create a plan for the future in how the college should invest its money. Nathan said that due to the departure of President Rosenberg and the arrival of President Rivera along with the pandemic, it has taken a while for certain departments to fully have planned on their future. Nathan specified by saying it had been probably 17 years since facilities had a strategic plan for its future. However, these meetings are happening right now and a plan for the next 10 years should be established so that facilities can be as efficient as possible.

Looking towards the future, there is plenty of interest at Macalester in sustainable design. Professor Manning said that she is attending meetings where they are discussing the possibility of installing a geothermal system here at Macalester. Geothermal energy has been around since the 1940s. The US Department of Energy (DoE) describes the geothermal process as making use of the almost constant temperature just below the Earth’s surface. In Minnesota, we face extreme colds, and then it gets warm during the summer. The geothermal pump would use the Earth’s regulatory temperature to then heat or cool buildings around campus. These geothermal systems are very expensive, so Macalester has to decide if the initial up-front cost is worth it for the return on investment in around 50 years, or if they should, for example, remodel a dorm or building. Carleton College uses a geothermal heat pump and its website states that it will hit the zero-emission by 2050 goal and this pump has allowed them to stay on course for that goal (Carleton Sustainability). 

Environmental Justice serves as a bridge between focusing on racial justice and focusing on climate science. The bridge can serve the Macalester community as well in the future. Rather than thinking of it as prioritizing energy waste or prioritizing students, Macalester has to bridge this gap with EJ. Professor Manning put forward this sentiment when describing how Macalester decides where to spend its money. Prioritizing environmental justice is prioritizing racial and wealth justice.

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