Business View Magazine September 2018

62 63 sustainability into its facilities and operations, focusing on the reduction of resources—electrici- ty, water, natural gas—used to power its buildings and infrastructure. It is estimated that the U of A’s energy management has saved it over $350 million since 1975, not to mention a concurrent reduction of 2.5 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions. Currently, the university’s district energy system, the fifth-largest campus system in North Amer- ica, efficiently heats and cools the entire North Campus using cogeneration and natural gas fuel. The cooling plant on campus produces and stores chilled water in a thermal energy storage system during off-peak hours when power prices are lower. The Jeanne and Peter Lougheed Perform- ing Arts Centre on the Augustana Campus boasts the largest building-integrated solar photovoltaic system in Canada, with 488 solar panels. Approx- imately 780 kilowatts of renewable and alterna- tive energy capacity is planned to be installed institution-wide by 2020. Business View Magazine first spoke with repre- sentatives of the U of A’s Office of Sustainability in 2017, and more recently with Robert Summers, Academic Director, University of Alberta Sustain- ability Council; Associate Director, Urban and Regional Planning, Department of Earth & Atmo- THE UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA spheric Sciences, Faculty of Science; and Shannon Leblanc, Program Coordinator, Energy Manage- ment and Sustainable Operations, to learn about some changes in the University’s sustainability operations. BVM: What changes have occurred on campus since last year? Summers: “We’ve actually had a rather major shift take place. Previously, the Office of Sustain- ability led the overall sustainability effort for the University. In January, the decision was made to, essentially, split that unit into two, one of those being the University of Alberta Sustainability Council. That name was chosen to demonstrate that this was something that represents all fac- ulties across campus. This unit will take on all of the academic initiatives that the Office of Sus- tainability had before, as well as look to launch new initiatives, thus expanding upon our academ- ic sustainability programming. “When this transition took place, one of the things we were aware of is that the University of Alberta has a real strength in researchers who focus on various aspects of sustainability– from environmental sustainability, to social sustain- ability, to economic sustainability - and we have programs that target certain elements of that.