Resource management specialist Noveda Technologies and facilities management firm Aramark have announced a strategic partnership aimed at developing tools to manage energy and water consumption in real-time.

The partnership is designed to deliver programs that drive and sustain behavioral change to reduce waste and reduce the consumption of electricity, natural gas and water in Aramark-managed higher education facilities across North America.

Noveda will provide Aramark’s clients with data acquisition hardware and software, along with the capacity for facility managers to view and monitor energy and water usage at multiple campus buildings from one system.

In other college sustainability news, Virginia’s Ferrum College is to this week start construction on a biomass boiler.

When fully operational the unit will provide approximately 65 percent of the campus’s heat and hot water by burning sustainable fuels such as, waste lumber products and locally grown switchgrass.

Earlier this month it emerged that 32 universities had committed $65 million to a new energy efficiency financing initiative focused on “green revolving funds.”

Billion Dollar Green Challenge aims to get colleges, universities and other nonprofits to invest a total of $1 billion in self-managed funds that are then used to finance energy efficiency upgrades that offer a quantifiable monetary saving or return.

A portion of the returns from these upgrades are then reinvested in the fund and used for future green projects.