Tour of University of Texas:
Gary L. Thompson Energy Engineering Building
& UT Austin Power Plant
Tour Start Power Plant Conf. Room
PPE 3.304 (see map in confirmation)
Thursday, February 27th, 2025
3:30 PM - 5:30 PM
Happy Hour (immediately following the tour)
Crown and Anchor Pub
2911 San Jacinto Blvd
Austin, TX 78705
About the Event:
Please join us for a tour of the two UT Austin campus buildings on February 27th – 3:30-5:30pm, followed by a happy hour at Crown and Anchor Pub (2911 San Jacinto Blvd, Austin, TX 78705)!
Closed toed shoes are needed for the tours. The tours will begin at the PPE building in conference room 3.304.
UT Austin Power plant (PPE):
UT Austin's Power Plant supplies almost 100% of the power and thermal requirements for over 20 million square feet serving 70,000 faculty, students and staff.
In 2014, UT Austin became the first university campus certified under the PEER rating system. Modeled on LEED and administered by GBCI, PEER measures and analyzes power system performance, validating progress and offering guidelines for future improvements to reduce energy losses, lower emissions and operating costs, and provide resilient, steady power systems. PEER looks at everything, essentially, from the transformer to the meter to identify things you can do to improve your resilience and reliability. Just like LEED encourages best practices in sustainability, PEER does that for power systems. In May 2020, after UT Austin recertified under PEER v2, the project earned Platinum certification.
Tour Guides:
Xavier Rivera Marzan, Executive Director for Utilities and Energy Management, UT Austin
Ryan L Thompson, Director of Utilities – Operations for Utilities and Energy Management, UT Austin
Jim Walker, Director of Sustainability, UT Austin
Matt Stevens, Planner, UT Austin
Gary L Thomas (GLT) Energy Engineering Building:
The Gary L. Thomas Energy Engineering Building is a LEEDv4 Platinum building that serves as a multidisciplinary hub for energy-related education, research and innovation on the UT Austin campus. It combines many sustainable and resilient strategies into one building while connecting strategically through an open plaza to the Speedway Mall, a pedestrian focused spine on the main campus. Many sustainable features of the site and the building that contributed towards its LEED certification will be featured in the tour.
Tour Guides:
Amy Ruffino, Architecture Studio Lead & Project Manager, Jacobs Engineering
Andres Mazry, Senior Project Architect – Jacobs Engineering
Jim Walker, Director of Sustainability, UT Austin
Matt Stevens, Planner, UT Austin
