Green Ideas Are Sprouting at all Three Campuses
U of T has set aggressive targets for becoming more sustainable, and is enlisting faculty and students for help
The old stone buildings around King’s College Circle give the St. George campus its character, but they pose a real challenge for Paul Leitch, the university’s sustainability director. Leitch works with staff in Facilities and Services to help reduce carbon emissions across all three campuses, and older buildings use a lot of energy – especially heat.
The work isn’t flashy, unless heating and cooling systems are your thing. But the department works on a wide range of sustainability initiatives – from solar panels to recycling to lighting retrofits.
Lately, the team has been drawing on the talent of faculty and students, through work-study programs, engineering capstone projects and regular course work to generate new environmental ideas and plan upgrades. It gives students the opportunity to work on real-life problems and enables his team to accomplish more. As Leitch notes, meeting our sustainability goals won’t be easy. “It’s all hands on deck,” he says.












No Responses to “ Green Ideas Are Sprouting at All Three Campuses ”
"This array, atop the Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre at U of T Scarborough, reduces the building’s energy use by 10 to 15 per cent."
Does it actually reduce energy usage or result in energy consumption from renewable sources? I would expect it to achieve both but would be interested in knowing how much energy reduction is associated with energy dispersion away from the structure resulting from panel presence.