If you've lived in this province, you may have heard this one before, "close that door, you're heating up Saskatchewan!"
Over the last decade, Suncrest College's Trades & Technology Centre has been doing just that in the Power Engineering Lab But that's all about to change. The change is thanks to a grant from Colleges and Institutes Canada, using funding supplied by the federal Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Canada, to a total of $70,000.
The goal of the program is to integrate a project on a college campus in Canada to raise awareness and reduce the climate impact of the campus, through a project. Each year around 10 colleges and polytechnics are selected to develop a project.
Suncrest is very proud to have been selected for the 2024-25 program. Suncrest College will make modifications to the power engineering lab so that when the power engineering lab is running, the heat produced by the lab will be used to heat the building itself. This will reduce greenhouse gas production at the College by enabling the College to turn off the building heating system while the lab boilers are functioning, reducing the amount of natural gas consumed. Until now, the heat from the PE Lab was vented into the atmosphere via heat exchangers outside the lab.
The awareness portion of this program is to have the Power Engineering students calculate the amount of Greenhouse Gases saved by the project and post this total on signage outside the lab, to be updated each year or term.
"This is a project that we have wanted to do for several years. We are so excited to start the work and involve students and staff at Suncrest. This will make our campus more sustainable and use the heat that is generated for a useful purpose." said Dr. Gwen Machnee, Suncrest Chair, Applied Research.
The project is expected to wrap up before the end of March 2025 and has been implemented since March 2024.
The drawings for the new retrofit have come from McPherson Engineering, with work to be done over the summer months with the goal of the lab boilers functioning normally by the upcoming fall.
More on CiCan's campus living lab program:
Turning your campus into a living lab means integrating applied research and teaching with campus planning, infrastructure, operations, and/or community development in a way that maximizes the impact of sustainability projects. The campus is a sandbox for innovation, opportunity, and testing new ideas in a local context, while learning from and sharing successes and challenges.
As interactive demonstrations, living labs connect college and institute faculty, staff, students, and community partners to raise awareness about climate change, showcase the sector's solutions and highlight the importance of reducing GHG emissions.
