"Grants to Green" is a program of Southface Energy Institute, The Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta and Enterprise Community Partners, undertaken with private funding from the Kendeda Fund. Its purpose is to help non-profit organizations in the 23-county Atlanta region to assess their facilities, identify energy-, water- and resource-efficiency upgrades and adopt best management practices in sustainability. The program funds Assessments by Southface and Implementation Grants by The Community Foundation for actual green upgrades.

By now most of you have noticed a difference in the parking garage in the form of lighting. In February, in part through a grant from Grants To Green, the Woodruff Arts Center replaced the high energy Metal Halide lights in the parking garage with low energy fluorescents. The two major benefits from this project are the energy savings and reduced relamping expense.

The fluorescent lighting that we installed uses 1/3 the energy of the old lights. Multiply that by 170 lights and it equates to us lowering our carbon dioxide emissions by 306,209 pounds and a savings of $15,000 a year. This will be a large help in meeting our Energy Star Program pledge to lower our overall energy consumption by 10%.

In addition to the energy savings, we are using far less bulbs. The met- al halide bulbs that we replaced lasted only a year and contained 28 milligrams of mercury. The current bulb that we have in place will last 3 years and contains only 3.5 milligrams of mercury. That equates to is over a $4,000 savings in purchase light bulbs, but more important for the environment, is that we are keeping 4,364 milligrams of mercury out of the waste stream.

We hope that as you travel through the parking garage, that you not only take a moment to enjoy the new lights, but also think of how much less of an environmental impact that they are having.

In September of 2007, Southface Energy Institute conducted an energy audit of the Woodruff Arts Center campus and off site facilities. During the energy audit of HMA Conservatory Lab an opportunity to improve the facilities energy use was identified. Southface Energy’s recommendation was to install a new building HVAC Automation System to reduce the energy consumption.

EMC Engineering Company was brought onboard to collaborate with Southface Energy Institute to design the new system. After designing the new building HVAC Automation System Trane Company was awarded the contract for installation. The project was completed March 1st and HMA Conservatory Lab is operating under this new control system.

In the year of 2008, the HMA Conservatory consumed 1.8 million kWh of electricity at a cost of $151,204, with a carbon footprint of 2,699,880 pounds of CO2. Our projection is that the new building HVAC Automation System can produce savings of 15% on energy costs and therefore reducing our carbon profile as well. That would be a dollar savings of $22,680 and a reduction of 404,982 pounds of CO2 per year. This project was funded in part by the Community Foundation of Atlanta’s Grants to Green initiative.