All of these changes that we have been highlighting would be quite costly, and to be blunt, the University would not go for dropping that much money. Luckily, we have a plan for that too. One could call it, "leap frog financing" (Keenan 2012).
Leap frog financing is quite simple when it comes to making a campus more efficient because over time, any changes that are made are projected to pay for themselves and more with how much money and resources they will save. For example, if we were to purchase and install occupancy sensors and lower wattage bulbs in just one building and then wait for a year, ideally, the new equipment would save enough money to pay for itself. Then, after we have, in a sense, made the money back that we originally spent to buy the new equipment, we can install a similar system in another building. The whole time, we will only have spent money in total for one buildings worth of new equipment.
This system would work for virtually any one of our efficiency suggestions. If we installed solar hot water heaters on a single building, it would be costly, but only for a short while until we make the money back because we don't have to spend money heating water on the updated building. Then we use the same money to install the same system on another building until we have updated as many buildings as necessary. When we get to this point in the greening of the campus, theoretically we should be looking at all profit and maybe even saving the campus enough money to lower tuition for future students!
