Saskatchewan slowly going green
Derek Leschasin
Issue date: 2/27/07 Section: News
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.
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.
Be the first to comment on this story