Folks at Texas Christian University should not look forward to getting their Fridays off, should an energy crisis once again grip the country. A story in the Daily Skiff, a newspaper at TCU, says that short weeks would not produce significant energy savings.

Some colleges across the country — notably Brevard Community College in Florida — have instituted four-day weeks in an effort to save money on energy. After all, if buildings aren’t open, you don’t have to light, air-condition, or heat them. According to a story last year on CNN’s Web site, Brevard saved $267,000 in energy costs,...

Syracuse U. challenged architecture firms to come up with inexpensive, sustainable housing designs, like this one by the Philadelphia firm Onion Flats. (Images courtesy Syracuse U. School of Architecture)

The Architect’s Newspaper reports on the results of a design competition at Syracuse University, where school of architecture asked firms to come up with designs for houses that could be built sustainably and cheaply — in this case, for less than $150,000. The three winners: A partnership between Architecture Research Office and Della Valle Bernheimer, of New York; Cook + Fox,...

Not that you need more depressing news, but Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon has halted college construction projects that were drawing from the state’s student-loan authority. According to the Associated Press, the loan authority has had financial troubles. As a candidate, the governor said that paying for building through the loan authority was “horrifically wrong public policy.”

“Nixon’s administration commissioner sent letters dated Tuesday to five universities notifying them that payments were being halted for about $150-million worth of construction projects,” said the AP story. “Many of those projects were either still in the planning stages or in the early stages of construction.”

The largest of the suspended projects is a $32-million cancer center at the...

Many thanks to Niles Barnes, a past guest blogger who is projects coordinator for the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, for pointing out this little news item: The British government will dole out funds for higher education institutions based in part on their performance in energy efficiency and reducing carbon emissions.

John Denham, Britain’s secretary of state for innovation, universities, and skills, has asked higher-education institutions to figure out a strategy for curbing carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050.

In a letter to the Higher Education Funding Council, Mr. Denham wrote: “One of my main priorities for the...

Technology-staff members know their computer gear. Facilities guys know a college’s energy consumption — they see the bills. Getting these two parties to talk to each other is one of the first steps to establishing greener IT operations on campus. That’s the topic of the latest episode of Tech Therapy, The Chronicle technology podcast. Listen to it here.

More bad news from California’s budget crunch. The University of California at Irvine has stopped work for three months on a $42-million arts building, and it will soon suspend construction of a $40.5-million building in the medical-school complex as well, according to an article in New University, a campus publication. Three months is the longest delay permitted by the university’s contracts with the construction firms hired to erect the buildings.

The 59,000-square-foot New Media Arts Building and Gallery, which is to be part of the university’s Claire Trevor School of the Arts, is just over a third complete. It was to open in 2010. Construction of the 65,000-square-foot

California’s budget woes come at a particularly inopportune time for Shasta College. Construction on the community college’s new library annex is half finished, but the state has frozen the money to pay for it. College officials say it’s too late to stop the $10-million project—they have to live up to the terms of their contract with the construction firm, for one thing, and if they did halt construction, they’d be left with a giant safety hazard in the middle of the campus.

According to an article in the Redding Record Searchlight, the state government’s decision to put a hold on money for construction projects statewide has left Shasta administrators scrambling to investigate borrowing options and whether to put up another campus...

The online version of today’s Chronicle features an article about the $825-billion stimulus package and the money that colleges hope to get from it for renovation, improvements, and energy-efficiency projects.

It seems that a number of college leaders are talking directly to their communities about how desperately their colleges need that money. Some people in those communities aren’t taking it well.

In an op-ed in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Robert H. Bruininks, the president of the University of Minnesota, tells Minnesotans that they should support the stimulus bill because it will bring jobs and much-needed repairs to the university. The need for the money is...

President Obama’s inaugural vow that America will “harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars” probably has biofuel boosters excited about what policies, subsidies, and research grants might roll out of the new administration. Of course, biodiesel is a controversial alternative energy source. People have raised questions about its net-energy potential and about sources of biodiesel oils.

Biodiesel made from waste oil has been less controversial, and has become the sort of project that environmentally oriented folks have taken up in garages and sheds all over the country. Colleges have gotten involved too. They have been involved not only in...

Several factors have brought sustainability to the forefront on college campuses in recent years, including the former vice president Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment, and the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification process. The Climate Commitment and LEED are part of a larger set of environmental requirements we face in facility operations each day on the Hamilton College campus. Our success in implementing green and sustainable actions hinges on our integrating new ideas into our routine operations and on how well the facilities department can work with the campus...