ASU Campus Metabolism

I just learned about Arizona State University's new building energy/resource use dashboard called Campus Metabolism. The dashboard was apparently put together by a team of students and is currently up and running for their new Global Institute of Sustainability (GIOS) building, with more buildings to come on line in the future. It looks like the GIOS building has AeroVironment wind turbines on the crest of the building, so I'm excited to see how they are performing when the renewable resources section of Campus Metabolism is working.

I am sure that this tool will be tweaked and improved as they develop it and roll it out for more buildings, but this is a great start. I hope to see real-time resource use dashboards much more widely used and believe that building occupants are ready to start paying attention to and understanding this type of information. We are already starting to see energy use competitions on college campuses - maybe some day we'll start seeing neighborhoods compete over who can use the least energy instead of who has the greenest lawn.