Cassie Kelly shows off the latest award from Horizon Utilities that Brock has received for its greening efforts. Last month, the University received an Energy Excellence Award for installing new, energy efficient light fixtures. 
Cassie Kelly shows off the latest award from Horizon Utilities that Brock has received for its greening efforts. Last month, the University received an Energy Excellence Award for installing new, energy efficient light fixtures.
Brock red? How about Brock green?
It’s not a stretch thanks to the University’s greening efforts, which recently netted a Horizon Utilities Energy Excellence Award for demonstrating a commitment to reducing demand for electricity and becoming more energy efficient.
The accolades were for Brock’s ongoing lighting conversion, in which 6,000 new energy efficient fluorescent lights were installed in 15 buildings on campus. The efforts earned Brock a shiny plaque and a cheque for almost $100,000 from Horizon toward the $250,000 project, which is being managed by Dave Balasiak.
“It’s great. It reinforces what we’re doing and it’s nice to be recognized,” said Cassie Kelly, director of Maintenance and Operations. “It’s $100,000 of free money. To us, that’s a lot of money, especially knowing we’re going to have even more in energy savings.”
The new fixtures will use 25 per cent less energy than the old ones and come with a two-year payback. They’ll shave about $150,000 a year off the University’s energy bills.
“It’s a better quality of light and it is brighter,” Kelly said about the new fixtures. “We’re quite excited to implement energy saving measures.”
And those measures won’t stop there. In addition to completing seven more buildings in the next phase, other projects on Facilities Management’s to-do list include improving the energy consumption of the University’s co-generation power plant.
Tweaks over the last year have already been done to reduce the plant’s natural gas consumption by about four per cent. But the University is applying to both Horizon and Enbridge for grants to make improvements bettering that, Kelly said.
Meters to gauge power consumption patterns will also be installed.
The moves to a more eco-friendly way of doing things at Brock will also help the University reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and meet the target of reducing consumption by 20 per cent over the next 10 years.
Congratulations to Cassie Kelly and her colleagues! Well deserved.
Now let’s start looking at unnecessary energy use in corridors and classrooms where the installation of a few manual or motion-activated switches would allow us to turn off unnecessary off-peak lighting without compromising safety. Perhaps we could start with the corrodors near faculty offices in Mac-Chown, where all the newly installed low-e lighting fixtures are still burning at full output 24/7, 365 days a year, at levels far higher than what is needed for safety.
Kudos again – and keep up the good work!