Blog Contributor: Noah Nickel
Recently I had an interview with Drew Cullen, the District Energy Manager at Brock University. This summer Drew began working to bring Energy Dashboard’s to the Brock Campus and will be showcasing Sustainability-related content on the existing slide carousels throughout the campus this coming school year, and so I wanted to speak with him about that project and what it means for Brock.
Q1. Do you mind just giving a quick background about yourself?
My name is Drew Cullen and I am the District Energy Manager here at Brock. In my role one of the many things that I do is run the Asset Management & Utilities team, who spearheads sustainability initiatives for Facilities Management. This department is comprised by a multi-disciplinary team and is responsible for the efficient and resilient production and supply of utilities to the campus.
Q2. Could you describe what an Energy Dashboard is to people who may have never heard of them?
It is a tool to create awareness for Faculty, Staff, and Students about the campus energy consumption. The dashboard is a tool for helping people become more aware of their utility consumption patterns. We want to engage people on the sustainable initiatives that the University is implementing to improve our campus energy usage and carbon footprint and have people make more sustainable decisions at Brock.
Q3. Why should people care about Brock’s energy usage?
Around the world, energy usage is directly related to the production of greenhouse gas emissions, having an impact on climate change. Likewise, waste also has a significant environmental impact. As one of the leaders in Niagara, Brock needs to set the example to improve our environment. We need the help of everyone in the Brock community to achieve this goal and we can display our results on the energy dashboards when we do implement them.
Q4. How can we as members of the Brock community contribute to reducing waste on campus and improving our dashboard metrics?
Little actions are all that it takes: Turning lights off in your office or classroom when they are not needed, taking shorter showers, setting your thermostat between 21-23 degrees, carpooling, using transit, eating less meat, properly disposing of recycling and waste, the list goes on.
Keep your eyes out for the Energy Dashboards, which are expected to launch sometime in the coming months, and the sustainability slide carousel content, which will launch at the start of the 2019 fall semester.
