Georgia Tech’s growth and renewal is dependent on a robust and adaptable campus infrastructure. The utility master plan projects must not only provide the new capacity required for expansion but also extend distribution systems to support innovative new buildings. They must anticipate and address the evolving needs of renovated and revitalized spaces, ensuring the entire campus is poised for future success and sustainability.

Supporting Georgia Tech’s Climate Action Plan (CAP) is crucial for achieving the campus’s energy, carbon, and water goals. New infrastructure projects must prioritize sustainability by addressing high heating energy users, reducing their load, and shifting fuel sources. These impactful projects, even if not directly tied to the CCP, significantly reduce Scope 1 emissions.

Resiliency empowers infrastructure to withstand system failures and continue meeting campus needs with minimal disruption. While the current infrastructure has vulnerabilities, particularly in distribution, the envisioned projects will address aging systems, create diverse pathways, and enable capacity to be swiftly redirected in failure scenarios ensuring a robust and adaptable campus for the future.

Infrastructure is the backbone that supports our buildings, and while its payback may not always be immediate, its long-term value is immeasurable. Every investment should strive to maximize returns, enabling operating savings to be reinvested into further infrastructure growth. By evaluating investments over a 20-year lifecycle, we can achieve sustainable paybacks through annual savings and the avoidance of future capital expenditures.