Success Story: Energy savings touch all corners of the College

Posted on Thursday, June 27th, 2013

Team effort, strong project management and innovation deliver long-term energy cost savings, smaller energy and water footprints, plus greater economic strength and increased energy awareness campus-wide.

In 2005, Algonquin College’s Physical Resources team embarked on an innovative strategy to reduce the College’s environmental footprint in areas of electricity, gas and water use, while ensuring that costs associated with energy system upgrades were kept within budget. They did so by creating an energy services contract (ESCO) with Direct Energy.

With involvement of all physical resources staff and project management from Direct Energy, the initiative has resulted in the installation of $6M worth of new equipment and systems that touch every building at the College’s Woodroffe campus. With a detailed feasibility study performed for a range of energy savings measures, the project’s scope included upgrades to the heating and cooling plant, retrofitting lighting systems, enhancing seals on doors and windows, optimizing building automation system components, and even upgrading water-wasting points (such as toilets) across campus.

The contract is structured for a 10-year payback. With the more energy-efficient systems in place, the College will be in a position to benefit from the more than $600,000 per year savings at the end of the payback period.

The ESCO (or ESCO 1, as it is now called, given that the College is preparing to launch its next Energy Services Contract) also included elements to connect the campus-wide energy savings measures with greater energy and water awareness for staff and students.

Implementation of the project was supported through a close working relationship with the Sustainable Algonquin Steering Committee (SASC). It represents an innovative approach addressing multiple sustainability goals.

“We see the ESCO 1 as a model for others to emulate,” states Udo Friesen, P. Eng. MMP/Team Leader, Facility Operations and Maintenance Services within the Physical Resources department. “In addition to our goals of energy costs savings and a smaller environmental footprint, we felt strongly that this innovative approach would be an important undertaking to demonstrate what is possible.”


Comments

Comments are closed.