Utility costs for all Northwestern buildings in the coming fiscal year are projected to reach $70 million, surpassing this year’s expected total by about $26 million. This 58 percent increase is the largest since the oil embargo of the 1970s, said Eugene Sunshine, Northwestern’s senior vice president of business and finance.

Utility costs include water, steam, electricity and natural gas expenses on NU’s Chicago and Evanston campuses.

New buildings, including the environmentally friendly Ford Motor Company Engineering Design Center, represent a small portion of the increase, Sunshine said.

“The biggest increases over this time are attributable to natural gas and electricity costs,” he said.

On April 13, NU announced that it would buy wind power to meet 20 percent of its electricity needs for the next four years, but Sunshine said this purchase will not cut energy expenses in the short-run. The switch was made primarily for environmental concerns and is “really not much of factor” in reducing costs, he said.

Sunshine said environmental designs, such as those used for the Ford Center, do not immediately reduce utility costs.

“The expenses for those kinds of investments are not less expensive,” he said. “It’s very hard to notice (immediate change).”

But Ronald Nayler, associate vice president of facilities management, said he wants to see all NU buildings environmentally certified as part of NU’s multimillion dollar conservation program.

“It’s all about making this a sustainable planet,” Nayler said.

NU administrators predict that the actual utility costs for the past fiscal year will reach $54.1 million, despite the budgeted amount of $44.4 million. Funds in NU’s budget will need to be adjusted to compensate for the disparity and next year’s increased projection, Sunshine said.

Because the budget is slightly more than $1 billion, adjustments to meet rising utility costs will not require “catastrophic” cuts in other areas, he said.

“You look at all of your expenses and your revenues and decide how much the numbers match up,” Sunshine said. “The energy cost increase is one of many things going up, but some revenues are also going up.

“Endowments, federal grants and tuition money become part of the equation when you’re trying to match up total revenues and total expenses,” he said.

NU may begin retrofitting buildings during the summer to cut costs, he said. This includes installing devices to automatically reduce building temperature at night and using lower-wattage light bulbs and fixtures.

Administrators are in the process of finalizing the budget for the fiscal year and numbers are subject to change, Sunshine said. Final budgetary requests are being examined now and a final plan will be made public in late May or early June. The budget goes into effect Sept. 1.

Recurring construction, maintenance and administration costs still need to be determined, he said.

“Some of the requests aren’t very sexy,” Sunshine said. “Many are just repairs.”

Reach Margaret Matray at [email protected].