College Initiative: Holiday Shut Down Energy Conservation

Posted on Thursday, December 19th, 2013

For the 2013 holiday shut down period all Algonquin College staff and faculty were reminded to take a few simple steps to help reduce wasted energy during the annual holiday shut down period.

The College is working closely with Siemens Building Performance and Sustainability team members to improve energy performance in all areas of the College. This project, named ESCO2, started in 2013 and is designed to deliver savings by decreasing electricity, natural gas and water use.

Faculty and staff also have a role to play as we work toward our goals.

The energy team involved in this initiative found interesting results that demonstrate that Algonquin College community members are already taking proactive steps to minimize wasted energy resources, and contribute to energy cost savings.

Within one area* audited, the team found the following percentages of systems turn off for the holiday shut down period:

• Computers: 92%
• Monitors: 57%
• Printers: 48%
• Secondary devices (such as speakers, a second monitor or other): 65%

With the figure of 92% applied to typical energy use for all of the computers and monitors at the Woodroffe campus, the team estimates that College can be experiencing approximate annual savings of: $44,000, 366,507 kWh, and 40 Tonnes CO₂e with such exemplary behaviour of turning off PCs and monitors at the end of each work day.

It is clear that simple, individual steps for energy reduction do add up!

Attendees at the information session were invited to take action to continue energy conservation and seek continuous improvement. Power bars were distributed and attendees were invited to install them on their desktops (rather than in a hard-to-reach location) and to use them on a daily basis to power down all devices at the end of each work day.

Congratulations to the entire Algonquin College community for demonstrating great energy conservation performance during the holiday shut down period!

Winner of the Solar Cell Phone charging kit: Renay Dixon. Congratulations!

*Note: the Algonquin College Woodroffe campus area audited during the holiday shut down was representational of a significant number of office workstations. The focus of this exercise was an examination of office space, rather than classrooms and computer labs.

Department leading initiative: Physical Resources

For more information, contact:
Algonquin College
613-727-4723
info@algonquincollege.com

• Posted in
• College Initiatives Economic Goals Environmental Goals Goal - Enhance Student Success Goal - Reduce Our Ecological Footprint Goal – Pursue Economic Strength Social Goals