Left to right: Bowdoin’s Engineer-in-charge Charles Blier, Capital Project Manager John Simoneau, and Maintenance and Project Manager Jim Diemer accepted the award from EPA officials in Boston on Monday
Bowdoin College, along with Pepco Energy Systems in Atlantic City, N.J., and Thermal Energy Corporation in Houston, Texas, has been named a 2015 winner of the Energy Star Combined Heat and Power Award.
The award recognizes organizations that have implemented highly efficient “combined heat and power technology” to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other air pollutants. CHP systems capture heat produced by the generation of electricity, which otherwise would be wasted, to provide space heating and cooling, hot water, and steam for commercial, institutional or industrial use.
Bowdoin’s CHP system provides space heating and hot water for 56 buildings totaling 1.4 million square feet, and it saves the College $138,000 a year.
The EPA commended Bowdoin and the other two winners for achieving operating efficiencies of 68 to 86 percent, which is higher than the efficiency of systems that separate the production of electricity and thermal energy (typically less than 50 percent).
