Enviromental Studies Building Reexamined by Scott Ewart Last Wednesday, Oberlin physics professor John Scofield reignited the controversy surrounding the Adam Joseph Lewis Environmental Studies building’s alleged energy inefficiencies. Placing most of the blame on the architects, William McDonough and Partners, as well as their subcontracted engineers for executing a faulty mechanical design, Scofield cited consumption and production data showing the building has not lived up to the architects’ promise for higher energy production than consumption. He also criticized irresponsible media publicity for spreading exaggerations about the building’s energy self-sufficiency. “William McDonough and Partners did not design a building capable of producing more energy than it uses,” he said, pointing to inefficient heating and cooling mechanisms as major sources of energy waste, such as the use of an electric boiler and tempered water loop heat pumps instead of the initially proposed geothermal heat pump. “So far this has been a coal powered building,” Scofield said, citing that 84 percent of the building’s power comes from local power plants, while only 16 percent is generated by the building’s photovoltaic array. Excessive energy consumption has compounded the problem, he said. The building was projected to consume 64,000 kilowatt hours annually, though in reality consumption has been between 130,000 and 190,000 kilowatt hours each year. “Building a green building is hard, it’s real hard,” he stated, and added that many green buildings fail to meet expectations for energy efficiency. “Usually, with green buildings, once the hard work is over they lose their greenness, and once the publicity is over you don’t hear about them,” he said, explaining a trend he hoped to change by publicizing some of the problems afflicting Oberlin’s much publicized green building. The Living Machine, which processes waste, requires a lot of energy to operate and is therefore not conducive to a building that generates more energy than it consumes. Scofield also pointed to the lack of integration during the design process. He said that engineers and consultants responsible for different parts of the building’s design did not spend significant time discussing how the building’s parts would function as a whole. Lack of accountability due to the absence of a fixed budget during the design process also contributed to irresponsible planning, he said. Despite recent decreases in energy consumption due to more conservative heating and ventilating policies and the warm winter, Scofield proposed more decisive action. “My own personal view is that we should sue William McDonough and Partners, and then I think we ought to fix the building. Many of the problems I highlighted can be fixed,” he said after the lecture. Scofield also talked about the media coverage of the building’s design and construction. “The architect seemed to have a reckless disregard for the facts,” he said. After the lecture he asserted one reason there had been a great deal of inaccurate reporting and controversy over his criticisms was that, “people in the Environmental Studies program and people associated with the building are very much afraid of bad publicity, and I’m bringing them bad publicity.” Some students voiced criticisms for Scofield giving his lecture while Environmental Studies professor David Orr, with whom Scofield has debated the success of the Lewis Center, is away in London. “I would be very curious to hear a similar argument from the pro side of the debate,” junior David Kaufman said.

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