Maram Falk
Assistant Director, Facilities Engineering Energy Efficiency, University of Minnesota
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Maram Falk is the Assistant Director of Facilities Engineering and Energy Efficiency at the University of Minnesota. Originally from Chicago, she studied Aerospace Engineering and Mechanical Engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Her work experience covers the gamut of coal power generation, natural gas power plant conversions, biofuel applications, and efficient distribution systemsas well as pharmaceutical, nutrition, and food manufacturing from FDA-certified facilities. She adopted the Golden Gopher life in 2014 to live closer to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area and began working for the UMN as Senior Energy Engineer for the agriculture-oriented St. Paul campus. Through her experiences, she gained a passion for energy systems and sustainable practices. She earned a Master’s in Public Affair at the University of Minnesota Humphrey School of Public Affairs, aiming to better connect the technical energy world and the layman policy influencers. Through her work at UMN, she oversees the district energy conservation work for about 350 buildings across 1,500 acres, bridging multiple university initiatives to optimize energy use, advance the building automation system, and meet goals for the climate action plan and local utility energy savings.
Sustainability Through Building Energy Efficiency: UMN’s Mission Towards Decarbonization
In 2022, the University of Minnesota achieved a major sustainability milestone: reducing its Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions by over 50% compared to a 2008 baseline. This 45-minute field report provides a practical, behind-the-scenes look at the physical infrastructure, operational strategies, engineering that made this possible, and outlines our roadmap for the next phase of decarbonization.
This session focuses on the operational realities of hitting aggressive climate targets on a massive, complex, and historic campus.
In the first half of the session, we will unpack the key drivers of our 50% reduction. We will discuss the financial and engineering math behind our new Combined Heat and Power (CHP) plant and how we benefited from a progressively cleaner regional electric grid. Crucially, we will highlight the operational wins through various existing technologies, and leveraging updated codes to safely reduce laboratory airflows. We will also share how our dedicated team of in-house energy engineers continuously drives savings through daily troubleshooting and design review.
In the second half, we will explore where we go from here by extracting efficiency from complex, existing systems. Attendees will learn about our active strategies for deploying occupancy and CO2 sensors for demand-control ventilation, expanding our recommissioning efforts and deploying continuous Monitoring-Based Commissioning (MBCx), and expanding our internal Demand Response program. We will also introduce advanced concepts like ultra-low temperature heating (utilizing chilled water for heating) and Smart Lab technologies.
Maram Falk
Assistant Director, Facilities Engineering Energy Efficiency, University of Minnesota
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