In CO, the Country's First Carbon-Positive Library (with Some Help from Carbon Credits)

Rangeview Library District branch features photovoltaic system, geothermal heating and cooling

Norman Oder -- Library Journal, 12/10/2009

• Matching grant for solar energy
• Contractor pays for carbon credits
• Aim to make all branches carbon-neutral

A new branch of the Rangeview Library District, CO, Anythink Brighton (the library’s brand is Anythink), has become the first carbon-positive library in the country, thanks to solar energy, sustainable design, and, not incidentally, the purchase of carbon credits, which are cash investments in clean energy development and production. 

In total, the library is offsetting 16 percent more carbon than it is using and the district will save more than $30,000 a year on energy.

Crucial to the new library is a $300,000 grant from the Colorado Department of Local Affairs for a photovoltaic system, which was matched by the library district. That $600,000 represented about 1/12 the cost of the total project: $7,262,186. The library said the Colorado Governor’s Office of Energy played a key role in gaining funding for this project.

“At every step, we have made our decisions based upon long-term sustainability,” said Rangeview Library District director Pam Sandlian Smith. “While the short-term costs may be higher, over the lifespan of the library, we are much more energy efficient and giving our community a higher return on their investment. Our goal is to eventually be carbon neutral at all of our libraries.”

Cutting carbon
Humphries Poli Architects P.C. incorporated energy-efficient features like the ground source heating and cooling, daylighting, and use of recycled materials. Fransen Pittman General Contractors purchased two years’ worth of carbon credits, making the building carbon positive until at least 2012.

Ambient Energy, energy consultant to Humphries Poli, said the project will offset the emission of an additional 167,620 pounds of CO2 created by other buildings within the community.

Library spokesman Steve Hansen told LJ that a building the size of Anythink Brighton typically would put out 1,138,000 pounds of carbon into the atmosphere annually. With geothermal ground well heating and cooling, large-scale south-facing daylighting, Solatubing (daylighting) elsewhere in the building, and stepped ballast artificial lighting control, the building’s carbon emissions output was reduced to 733,735 pounds annually.

With the solar photovoltaic system (left) implemented, the library would be contributing 345,280 pounds of carbon annually to the atmosphere, he said.

But the credits bring the building past carbon-neutral to carbon-positive.

Buying credits
Fransen Pittman purchased 818 credits from the Carbon Solutions Group; 460 of those credits are for the Anythink Brighton project and 358 credits are for the Anythink Huron Street project, scheduled to open in February, on which the contractor is also working.

In the case of Anything Brighton, the credits match 70 percent of the building's annual electricity usiage with equal credits that support biomass renewable energy production.