Semans Griswold Environmental Hall

Washington College | Chestertown, Maryland

As a national leader in undergraduate environmental and sustainability studies, Washington College in Maryland recently opened this new 10,000 square foot environmental center. It provides faculty offices, teaching, and lab space for the college's growing environmental academic programs. The environmental center was built on a brownfield site that the college had remediated. It is directly on the Chester River, allowing students the ability to immediately collect, observe and process samples associated with their coursework.

To emphasize Washington College’s commitment to meet the highest standards of sustainability, the college is pursuing Living Building Challenge Petal certification for this building. CMTA helped the design team achieve drastic energy reduction by incorporating envelope, HVAC, and lighting design best practices. CMTA also conducted owner utilization charrettes to understand their needs better and optimize plug load energy use.

CMTA designed A PV array and Energy Storage System (ESS) was designed in a way to increase building energy resiliency by coupling PV and ESS to provide back-up power without using combustibles. The ESS system also supports demand management and peak shaving to generate cost savings for the school. A load shedding approach for the ESS system was incorporated that would extend back-up times for critical lab loads.

CMTA also provided building optimization commissioning, performance verification, and building pressure testing construction services.