Saskatchewan slowly going green

CUP Central Bureau Chief
WINNIPEG (CUP) - The environmental sustainability of university campuses is becoming an important issue, and universities across the country are taking on a wide array of initiatives to achieve that goal. Recently, both major Saskatchewan universities announced projects that will go a long way toward reducing energy consumption on campus.
"It's becoming increasingly clear that global sustainability is the issue of this generation, and I believe that universities are a very logical starting point," said Margret Asmuss, sustainability co-ordinator at the University of Saskatchewan. "We have a lot of influence . we have much of the best research capacity in the country, and so if universities can't do it, nobody can."
The Facilities Management Division at the University of Saskatchewan has a plan in the works to replace 26,000 fluorescent fixtures with energy-efficient electronic ballasts, as well as to replace 3,000 incandescent lights with fluorescent bulbs.
If approved by the school's Board of Governors, the plan would cost $1.9 million over three years, with the costs being made up by energy savings within six years.
The project stems from the recommendations of a 2002 energy audit done at the university, and follows on the heels of the establishment of a campus-wide recycling program last fall.
The University of Regina is set to begin energy efficiency upgrades to five buildings this year, which will save the university approximately $345,000 a year in energy consumption. Major components of the upgrades will be the installation of energy-efficient fluorescent lighting, as well as the replacement of aging ventilations systems, the university announced.
More than $200,000 in funding for the project will come from a grant made by the federal government. These upgrades, phase one in a three-phase plan, will upgrade lighting, ventilation, and include occupancy sensors in classrooms.
Neil Paskewitz, manager of mechanical and electrical projects at the U of R's physical plant, said the upgrades are being done as a cost-saving and environmental initiative. The physical plant on campus recently completed its own energy audit, targeting older buildings as having potential for the largest energy savings.
Paskewitz said that over the next five years, the efficiency measures described in the audit will cost $5.5 million and will result in $850,000 in annual utility savings.
Despite the perception of universities as not being particularly large polluters or energy consumers, Asmuss says there is plenty of work to be done. Lab facilities and computers especially require large amounts of energy. As a result, a large campus can have a bigger impact than a similar-sized city.
"[At] the U of S ... when it's full, there's 30,000 people here. So we're basically Saskatchewan's fifth largest city," Asmuss said. "So we have all the infrastructure that a city that size would include ... we have all of the issues that a municipality the same size has, and perhaps more."
Both campuses have a long way to go. Unlike several campuses across the country, such as McGill University, the University of British Columbia and the University of Winnipeg, neither university has a formal environmental or campus sustainability policy in place, though one is in the works at the U of S, and has been proposed for the U of R.
Currently, UBC is considered a leader in sustainability initiatives. In the early '90s, UBC, along with other universities around the world, including the U of S, signed the Talloires Declaration. The signatory campuses pledged to encourage environmental sustainability on-campus and off.
"After signing it, a lot of universities sort of walked away and didn't really do anything about it," said Ruth Abramson of the UBC Sustainability Office. "But UBC had a very active community in the academic part of the university that were working on sustainability."
In 1997, UBC became the first Canadian university to establish a sustainability policy. Since then, Abramson said, changes to lighting, ventilation, and other infrastructure saved UBC $2.5 million annually.