The uni­ver­si­ty of tech­nol­o­gy of Com­pieg­ne (UTC) has been deploy­ing, over the past sev­er­al years, an active pol­i­cy of build­ing works to reduce its ener­gy con­sump­tion and at an accel­er­at­ed pace since the “France Relance” plan in 2020 and the “Sobri­ety plan” in 2022. This is com­pli­ant with reg­u­la­to­ry require­ments, but also with the engi­neer­ing school’s proac­tive pol­i­cy of active­ly engag­ing in the three­fold: eco­log­i­cal, soci­etal and dig­i­tal transitions.

Reduc­ing UTC’s car­bon foot­print is one of the objec­tives of the strate­gic roadmap adopt­ed by UTC’s Aca­d­e­m­ic Board of Direc­tors last May. And build­ing can make a major con­tri­bu­tion. As a reminder, the build­ing sec­tor accounts for 44% of ener­gy con­sump­tion and almost 25% of CO2 emis­sions in France (source: Ademe); the French gov­ern­ment is there­fore insist­ing on the need for its assets to set an exam­ple, by encour­ag­ing uni­ver­si­ties to car­ry out ren­o­va­tion work. Such work also helps the insti­tu­tion to con­tain ris­ing ener­gy bills, which impact heav­i­ly on their bud­gets. «The aim is to iden­ti­fy oppor­tu­ni­ties for ener­gy sav­ings, both in terms of build­ing per­for­mance (by insu­lat­ing build­ings, for exam­ple) and in the day-to-day use and oper­a­tion of the estab­lish­ment. As part of the Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment and Cor­po­rate Social Respon­si­bil­i­ty Mas­ter Plan cur­rent­ly being drawn up, we are work­ing on all these areas, with a par­tic­u­lar focus on rais­ing user aware­ness so that they learn about and adopt ener­gy-sav­ing behav­iours on the premis­es. The aim is not just to reduce ener­gy con­sump­tion: we are also work­ing to ensure that the work car­ried out improves user com­fort,» explains Emmanuelle Hardy, Direc­tor of Her­itage and Logis­tics at UTC. In view of the efforts required to improve the ener­gy per­for­mance of its build­ings, the UTC finances some of the work itself, but also takes advan­tage of the oppor­tu­ni­ties it is giv­en to achieve this by respond­ing to var­i­ous calls for projects, such as the recent Eco­log­i­cal Tran­si­tion 2024 call for projects, car­ry­ing fund­ing of €878 267.

Focus on the Ecological Transition 2024 call for projects

Work on this call for projects is con­cen­trat­ed on the Ben­jamin Franklin and Cen­tre de Recherche sites, which are both the largest and old­est sites on the UTC cam­pus. These two sites account for two-thirds of the UTC’s sur­face area and are char­ac­ter­ized by their poor ini­tial ener­gy per­for­mance. At the Research Cen­tre, the work will involve repair­ing and rein­forc­ing the insu­la­tion of the heat­ing pipes, which car­ry water at tem­per­a­tures of up to 80°C. At Ben­jamin Franklin, all the floors fac­ing the exte­ri­or will be insu­lat­ed. This work will be 95% com­plete by 2024. «We expect to save sev­er­al hun­dred MWh per year and improve user comfort.

Inventory of UTC sites

The Ben­jamin Franklin» build­ing, account­ing for 15 400 m² of gross floor area (GFA), ded­i­cat­ed to core pro­gramme teach­ing and stu­dent activ­i­ties, was built in 1975, with low ther­mal insu­la­tion because it was built before the sec­ond oil cri­sis and with some strin­gent archi­tec­tur­al choic­es. Locat­ed in the heart of down­town Com­pieg­ne, the build­ing is high­ly pro­tect­ed in terms of archi­tec­tur­al stan­dards, mak­ing it par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult to work on. The UTC Research Cen­tre, with 29 300 m² of floor space for research and spe­cial­ized teach­ing, was built in 1978. It has been the main focus of ener­gy ren­o­va­tion invest­ments in recent years, but it is also archi­tec­tural­ly pro­tect­ed due to its prox­im­i­ty to the Roy­al­lieu Abbey, mak­ing it very dif­fi­cult to work on the build­ing itself. For the Pierre Guil­lau­mat build­ing and its 11 200 m² of GFA, built between 1996 and 2006, the ther­mal insu­la­tion is sat­is­fac­to­ry. Here, few invest­ments have been made in ener­gy sav­ings, as the build­ings are recent. As for the Site de l’Innovation, with sev­er­al build­ings built in 1991, 1996, 2014 and 2015, the lat­est build­ings have high ener­gy per­for­mance levels.

More than 5 million euros worth of work has been completed since 2021

For sev­er­al years now, UTC has been work­ing to improve the ener­gy per­for­mance of its build­ings, with emblem­at­ic projects such as the con­nec­tion of all its build­ings to the dis­trict heat­ing net­work, which since 2021 has been more than 65% pow­ered by bio­mass (wood) rather than by gas; the com­plete ren­o­va­tion of the wing of one of the Research Cen­tre build­ings (Build­ing H), result­ing in an ener­gy sav­ing of more than 60% after the reha­bil­i­ta­tion work was com­plet­ed; like­wise for the insu­la­tion of all floors fac­ing the out­side of the Research Cen­tre. Since 2021, over 5 mil­lion euros worth of work has been car­ried out to improve ener­gy per­for­mance and sum­mer com­fort at the Research Cen­tre and Ben­jamin Franklin build­ing, thanks in par­tic­u­lar to the France Relance plan. «Oth­er actions were added, such as low­er­ing the win­ter indoor ref­er­ence tem­per­a­ture to 19°C, pur­chas­ing elec­tric ser­vice vehi­cles and installing recharg­ing sta­tions, set­ting up an ener­gy per­for­mance con­tract with the heat­ing oper­a­tor, or the instal­la­tion of an adi­a­bat­ic cool­ing sys­tem in the Sports Hall, which is more vir­tu­ous than air-con­di­tion­ing and very use­ful in peri­ods of high heat, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing exam ses­sions» adds Arnaud François, in charge of the Build­ing and Ener­gy Ren­o­va­tion oper­a­tion. UTC is there­fore tru­ly com­mit­ted to a con­tin­u­ous improve­ment approach, par­tic­u­lar­ly in terms of ther­mal per­for­mance and the use of bio-sourced mate­ri­als wher­ev­er possible.

KD