This story was written by Director of Engineering and Utilities, Paul Landry, and Campus Energy Manager, Ben Levie.
Things are beginning to change at the UCSF Parnassus campus. During the last two years, gas was shut off to four buildings on campus permanently. First, the Woods and Surge buildings which will be turned back to greenspace. Following this, UCSF Parnassus campus made a symbolic step when it permanently shut off gas to the UC Hall building and Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute buildings. At over 100 years old, UC Hall was one of the original buildings on campus and in the distant past UC Hall served as the original hospital and, in its basement, ran boilers using gas and oil to heat several of the adjacent buildings.
Both UC Hall and the Langley Porter building are being demolished and replaced by two new buildings: the New Hospital and the Parnassus Research and Academic (PRAB) Building. Not only will the new replacement buildings have no natural gas, but both are designed to supply heated air via low temperature hot water (not steam).
These will be the first buildings in a new campus heating network which will use electricity rather than natural gas for their heating. In fact, because the New Hospital and PRAB are designed to operate on lower temperature water heating, UCSF is recovering most of the heat for the two new buildings from the heat that is currently being exhausted by campus and hospital chilling needs.
“As we think about how to decarbonize heating systems, it's important to consider efficiency and to treat heat as a precious commodity," said Utilities Director Paul Landry. "UCSF needs to take every opportunity to develop infrastructure that allows the capture of every bit of wasted heat on campus and put it to work. Everyone involved in these projects should be very proud of the contribution that these two projects are making by laying the groundwork towards decarbonizing the heating systems on campus.”
Things are beginning to change at the UCSF Parnassus campus. During the last two years, gas was shut off to four buildings on campus permanently.
