1. James Joyce Library: Energy Efficiency
Stephen Leslie 15204627
The building which I work in a lot is the library on the UCD Belfield campus (James Joyce Library).
According to the building energy rating certificate which can be seen at the entrance to the library,
this building got a B3 which is equivalent to 282KWH/M^2/year of both electrical and non-electrical
energy. While a B3 is considered a good score, it must be emphasized that this is based on energy
consumed per meter squared, the total usable area of the library is 24,750M^2 which means based
on the BER certificate the building consumes a total of over 6.9 million Kwh per year.
Figure 1 Photo taken by the author. This sign is located beside the stairs at the main entrance to the library
All the buildings on campus have their energy readings taken and stored online through the e3
website, all the graphs for overall energy consumption within the building have been sourced from
this website ((𝑒3
𝑈𝐶𝐷)
Figure 2 Monthly Heat used by the building expressed in Kwh/M^2 sourced from http://e3.ie/ucd/

2. Figure 3 Monthly electricity used by the building expressed in Kwh/M^2 Sourced from http://e3.ie/ucd/
While they don’t give exact figure on this website, they do show an expected trend of low heat
consumption in summer and high use during winter which is quite common in buildings situated in
temperate oceanic climates.(Johansson et al., 2007). The electricity consumption throughout the year
looks a lot more stable which is probably due to the fact that the majority of the energy used in the
building is for lighting which is used every day, plug sockets which power the student’s laptops and an
escalator which is used to transport people to different levels in the building.
Efficiency standards
The European Union has put in place an Energy Efficiency Obligation Scheme (EEOS) which was put in
place on the 1st
of January 2014. Under Article 7, the directive states that energy suppliers in Ireland
must reduce their sales by volume to customers by 1.5% every year until 2020. Based on this, Ireland
must save 1102 GWh of energy every year (Energy Efficiency Obligation Scheme-Ireland, 2014). If this
building is to play its part in reducing the energy demands of the country you should focus on
exceeding 1.5% energy savings every year and advertise this throughout the facility for good PR. It
should be noted that only one of the energy reduction plans requires a substantial amount of finance,
however plans have been put into place to deal with that, the rest should be covered using your annual
working capital. All the ideas and actions written about in this report are only recommendations based
on observations made by the author.
Energy reduction plan .1
In order to enter the library you must pass through the ID scanning gate and then either turn right to
climb the stairs or turn left and use the escalator as seen in figure 4. There is also an elevator on each
floor for people who actually need help moving up and down the different stairs, if we are to assume
that the majority of people entering the library are going to the second, third and fourth floor (which
is where the official studying area is) then it can be assumed that most of these people (including
myself) will choose to use the escalator. What if the escalator connecting the first and second floor
was removed and how much energy would this save in the year? I have looked at the escalator in
question and it is a Schindler, it moves slowly when no one is on it to save electricity which is why I
am assuming it is an Ecoline model. Based on the energy graph which has been put on a PDF
advertising the escalator (Schindler Escalators Energy-saving solutions for a sustainable future, n.d.)

3. the energy consumption from this is roughly 1.5KW however due to the high use of the one in UCD I
will assume that it uses on average 2KW. The library website states that the building is open to
students from 07:00 – 24:00 Monday to Friday and 09:00 – 21:00 Saturday and Sunday(UCD library
Homepage, 2015) . If we assume that it is in operation 365 days of the year then it is possible to
calculate the energy required to run it throughout the year.
Figure 4 1st floor plan of the James Joyce Library (ucd.ie/library)
(52*(17*5) +52(24))(2KW)= 11,300Kwh*0.16cent/kwh = €1800
This is not a massive saving, however it would permanently remove some of the baseload power
required for the building and make people slightly fitter at the same time (Leon et al., 1996). It would
not be necessary to remove the escalator as it is possible to switch the escalator off and it can then
function as stairs (De Almeida et al., 2012).
Plan .2
One of the major challenges with heating a large building like the library is that thermal stratification
can occur. This happens because warm air is less dense and rises to the ceiling. The problem is that
heat is added at the ground level to reach the right temperature, but this heat rises and settles near
the ceiling which means there is a high temperature difference between inside and outside at the roof
level which allows more heat to escape the building (Saïd et al., 1996). It has been proven however
that by pumping the hot air near the ceiling down to the ground level, savings can be made in heating
costs (Rahimi and Tajbakhsh, 2011). It has been shown that a significant amount of heat can travel
through staircases from one floor to another (Shi et al., 2014) which means that some heat on the
fourth floor of the library could in fact be coming from the ground floor. If heat could be circulated
evenly on this floor, it might be possible to switch off the heating on this floor. A company called Airius
sells Destratification fans at prices starting around £560 (eBay, 2013), assuming that you installed four
of these devices on the ceiling which includes postage and installation the total cost would be around
€3500. Calculating the payback on these systems can prove to be quite complex due the fluid nature
of air however, the Airius website advertises heat savings between 15-35%, (Airius Destratification
Fans, 2015). If I assumed that the actual heat savings were 1% and I based the heating costs on the
BER rating as seen in figure 1, the calculation would work out as follows.
98 KWH/𝑚2
/𝑦𝑟 * 24,750𝑚2
= 2.4million KWH/yr of heat demand

4. 2.4 million KWH/yr * 1% energy savings * 5 cent/KWH of heat= €1,200 savings every year.
€3500/€1,200 = 2.9 year payback
It must be stressed again that these are just assumptions and it is very possible that the savings could
be as high as 3% which would give a 1 year payback.
Figure 5 this schematic shows what is happening on the fourth floor. Heat is entering the area from air which rises from the
ground floor and passes through the escalator corridor. Heat gets trapped at the top of the building which then gets blown
down a circulated around the working area.
Plan 3
I have looked in the library and have found that there is both LED and T8 fluorescent tubes used to
light the main area within the library. Unfortunately I did not have the time to count up all the light
bulbs in the library however I am going to make the assumption that half of the lights are 58W T8
fluorescent tubes and the others are high efficient 1.5m 22w LED tubes (Trust LED, 2014). I am also
going to assume that each 5ft tube lights up 4𝑚2
of area.
Calculation: 24,750𝑚2
/2 =12,375𝑚2
(this is the area light up with T8 fluorescent tubes)
12,375𝑚2
/4𝑚2
= 3093 (this is the amount of T8 fluorescent tubes used in the library).
£18.99 per light (Amazon.co.uk, 2015)
£18.99 * 3093 = £58,736 * 1.42 = €83,143 (X-rates.com, 2015)
It will be assumed that the cost to deliver all of these bulbs to Ireland is around €3000
It will also be assumed that it will take one person 2 weeks to install all the lights in the building who
is payed €10/hour.
Labour = €10/hr * 2 weeks * 40 hours per week = €800

5. Cost of lights + transport + installation = €86,943
Interest rate @ 5.74% (Businessbanking.bankofireland.com, 2012)
€86,943 * 1.0574 = €91,933 is the total cost of the project.
Cost of electricity @ 16cent/KWH (Comparison of Energy Costs, 2015)
40watt saving * 3093 lights * 5668 working hours per year = 701,244Kwh per year
701,244Kwh per year *.16cent/Kwh = €112,199 saving every year
€91,933 /€112,199= 0.81 year payback.
Any energy efficiency plan that is put in place should not in any way harm or cause discomfort to the
people inside the building. The main purpose of having lights in the library is to help people read, type
on their laptops and to help find their way around the place (Murphy, 1996), if however the changes
in the lighting were to cause discomfort to the readers inside it should not go ahead, thankfully
research has shown that led lighting can in fact supress eye fatigue which could help boost educational
productivity in that space (Wang et al., 2015)
Plan 4
On the basement level of the library there is a Student shop which sells soft drinks, packaged
sandwiches and other pre-packaged foods (www.ucd.ie, 2015). These are all sold off vertical fridges
which do not have a glass door keeping the cold air around the products, this means that the cold air
generated from the compressors will leak out into room which means that the fridge will have to work
harder than one which has an insulated see-through door. A previous study has shown that a vertical
display fridge uses 30% more electricity than one which has a glass door in-front of it, it was also shown
that the level of sales was not affected by the door (Fricke and Becker, 2011). There results showed
that for every meter of display, an open case would use 7.25kwh/day and on with a glass door used
5.61Kwh/day which means that converting would save 1.6kwh per meter per day. Based on a rough
estimate from looking at the fridges, there is around 11 meters of display refrigeration in the shop.
Assuming that the cost of electricity is 16 cent/kwh (Comparison of Energy costs, 2015) and that the
fridges are the same make and model as those in the study, the potential saving is around €1050 per
year. Assuming it costs €3000 to get a company to manufacture and fit glass doors onto the fridges in
the shop, the project would pay for itself in just under three years. However, fridges do not last forever
which means that it might be better to wait until the current one shops working and then by a high
efficiency fridge.
Plan 5
It has been shown in studies that people who have access to live data of their electricity usage in their
house tend to have more motivation to switch off lights and appliances due to the fact that they can
see how much it is costing them at that moment in time(Joachain and Klopfert, 2014; Scott et al.,
2014) . It has also been shown that employees working in a company can act as the best solution
finders as they usually have to deal with the problem on a day to day basis (Syla and Rexhepi, 2013).
It should also be stressed that an energy efficient policy within a company can only be successful if the
people working there are motivated and willing to put in effort to make it a success. The final
recommendation I would make is to buy 10 of your employees an OWL Intuition E online Wireless
Electricity home Energy Monitor (Theowlireland.com, 2015). It says on the webpage that if you buy
10 units the unit cost becomes €87.60, add on another €6 for postage and packaging and the total
cost of this would be €882. The main aim of this investment is to motivate the library staff to come up

6. with ideas to save energy and to make them more aware of simple things at home like switching off a
light or appliance when it isn’t being used, with the hope that these behavioural changes will be seen
while they are at work. It is my hope that by doing this, it will develop a sustainability culture in the
work place. Creating a culture in a company will not happen in one day, it takes years of hard work
and effort (Rao and Weintraub, 2013), however actions like this are a good start.
Conclusion
After conducting my investigation it has become clear that this building is in-fact quite efficient,
however, there will always be improvements which can be made, continuous improvement and
engagement with your employees is critical for the success of this project.
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