Flicking off the lights is a lot easier than modifying your car so that it runs solely on french fry grease, yet both can have a huge impact on energy consumption.
What started off as an energy conservation school project for John Molson School of Business students Ronnie Smith, Matthew Bufo, Alex Fares, Daniel Blumer and Matthew Pekofsky snowballed into another stride in making Concordia University the most environmentally-friendly university campus in Quebec.
The students are launching a campaign called “Power-It-Off,” encouraging their peers to turn off the lights if they are the last ones to leave the classroom. Regardless of whether the next class starts in 15 minutes or the next morning, the group insists that turning off the light switch could have a huge impact on energy conservation.
“We’ve been talking to the janitors, the staff members, students, anybody who will listen,” group member Ronnie Smith said. “Just asking them to turn out the lights at the end of the day, on the way out of a classroom.”
The group spent last week campaigning in the Hall building, handing out stickers that fit over light switches, and pamphlets printed on recycled paper. The stickers serve to remind people that all it takes is one flick to help reduce the massive consumption of energy at Concordia.
“The cost to provide electricity just in the Hall building is huge,” Smith said. While the exact amount is confidential, Smith said his group had analyzed several months’ worth of documents, and were stunned at the costs.
Hydro-Quebec bills work in two ways – the first is based on the amount of electricity that you use (you pay so much per kilowatt), and the second is for the month’s peak.
During the day when most campus computers are running and projectors are used during class, the peak is reached easily. Once that peak is maintained for a certain amount of time, then the university also pays fees on that usage.”We want to bring that peak down,” Smith said.
Through visiting classrooms and talking with the support staff, “Power-it-Off” members concluded that 88 per cent of all unoccupied Concordia classrooms are left with their lights on. Conserving this energy would allow Hydro-Quebec to supply more electricity to cities in Eastern Ontario that currently use pollutant energy sources such as coal and oil. Selling these services to neighbouring provinces would provide a further flow of income for Quebec.
Profits aside, the main goal is still to make Concordia more environmentally friendly. Flicking off a light switch has the potential to limit production of carbon dioxide on campus caused by excess electricity consumption.
While the group remains hopeful that they will successfully lower the amount of energy consumed within the university, they acknowledge the project has to start small.
Sometimes it’s not even a matter of flicking off all of the lights. Most larger classrooms at Concordia have a two or three-tiered lighting system, and just switching off one of the tiers would still provide sufficient light and save on energy at the same time.
Lights could also be completely abandoned in favour of natural sunlight for classes during the day. Smith added, “We’d eventually like to have all the computers in the lab turned off during quiet hours.”
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