NJIT has an undergraduate population exceeding 10,000 students, so a significant amount of energy is needed to conduct campus operations. This begs the question: how is NJIT supporting its energy demands and meeting its sustainability goals? 

This is the question The Vector asked Dr. Prabhakar Shrestha, NJIT’s first Assistant Director of Sustainability. The Office of Sustainability was developed in 2022 to meet the university’s strategic goals of conserving green spaces, increasing energy efficiency in buildings and reducing food waste. Dr. Shrestha arrived at NJIT the same year after serving as the Director of Sustainability at the University of Nebraska. 

One of Dr. Shrestha’s first projects involved collecting data to submit to the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE), which compiles data from universities across the United States; NJIT received a silver rating for its efforts. Dr. Shrestha has also secured grants to replace decaying tree species with native species.

He is active with many organizations on campus. Two prominent programs include the biodiversity initiative with first-year honors students and the annual campus-wide Earth Day Celebration. The Office collects data on food waste, organizes e-battery drives, and calculates the energy demand for the campus buildings, among other tasks. 

Looking forward, Dr. Shrestha wants to continue working towards NJIT’s decarbonization goals by developing peer engagement programs and increasing communication with the stakeholders involved in NJIT’s sustainability efforts. 

Here are five takeaways regarding NJIT’s carbon footprint, as documented in the 2023 report by the Association of Sustainability in Higher Education: 

• Efforts are underway to bring the solar panels that have been added to the Wellness and Events Center (WEC) online. Once ready, they will produce about 600kW — half of all the energy the WEC needs to operate. NJIT reports that the successful launch of these solar panels will save the university $3.2 million over 30 years.

• NJIT is more energy efficient than eight of its peer institutions: American University, Bloomsburg University, Boston College, Northeastern University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Rutgers University-Newark, University of Rhode Island, and West Chester University. NJIT used 82,060 British thermal units (BTU) per gross square foot (GSF) in 2024 which is below the group’s average of 104,753 BTU/GSF, according to data collected by Gordian, an outside engineering consultant. GSF is defined as the sum of all the areas of the floors inside the building as well as the area of the external walls outside the building.

• Most of the energy needed to heat and cool the buildings at NJIT comes from natural gas which it purchases from PSEG. While NJIT does not have coal fired power plants on campus, it has boilers and chillers in each building that operates off of natural gas, shared Dr. Shrestha.

• NJIT purchases electricity from PSEG; about 33% of the energy is from nuclear sources, 44% natural gas, 15% coal, and smaller subsets of hydroelectric, oil, and renewable energy sources, according to PSEG.

• NJIT’s carbon emissions come from three sources: 30% comes from burning natural gas on campus, 30% comes indirectly from the electricity bought from PSEG, and 40% results from the daily commutes by students, faculty, and staff, according to data NJIT submitted to the Association of the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education.