Energy Planning and Innovation Mandate
The Energy Planning and Innovation (EPI) group operates within UBC’s Energy and Water Services (EWS). The group’s mandate is to develop long-range energy infrastructure plans and implement energy and water conservation and efficiency measures that reduce UBC’s operating costs, defer costly infrastructure upgrades, reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and lessen UBC’s exposure to fluctuating energy markets.
The long-term value of our energy management efforts can be measured by the reduction of UBC’s energy use intensity, which is the energy consumed per square metre (m2) of building floor space.
Since the start of UBC’s ECOTrek energy and water retrofit program in 2001, 200,000 m2 of energy-intensive laboratories have been built on campus. However, through our energy conservation efforts, energy use intensity actually decreased, as shown in the chart.
UBC has avoided energy costs of over $40 million since 2001. Current and future projects such as the Steam to Hot Water Project, Building Tune-ups, Green Labs and other successful energy conservation and efficiency efforts will continue to drive down UBC’s energy and water costs.
Goals
The EPI group’s goals for the next five years are to:
- Offset 100 per cent of UBC’s new building energy consumption through energy conservation and efficiency measures
- Aggressively pursue UBC’s Climate Action Plan targets of reducing GHG emissions by 33 per cent below 2007 levels by 2015, 67 per cent by 2020, and 100 per cent by 2050
- Reduce UBC’s natural gas consumption by 20,000 gigajoules (GJ) annually
- Reduce UBC’s electrical consumption by 4,000,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) annually
- Maintain all energy savings achieved through building performance monitoring, targeting and reporting
- Achieve energy savings and GHG emission reductions in a fiscally responsible manner
- Improve overall building thermal comfort, lighting, air quality and system reliability
Energy conservation projects
UBC’s Energy and Water Services (EWS) is responsible for several energy projects and programs that are saving UBC significant amounts of energy and associated operational costs.
Since 2011, we have reduced annual campus electrical use by over 13.4 gigawatt hours (GWh), equivalent to shutting down our Vancouver campus for 2.5 weeks. We’ve also saved 143,000 gigajoules (GJ) of natural gas, equivalent to taking 1600 cars off the road!
Below is a list of some of the projects that have contributed to energy savings and efficiencies at UBC.
2024: Continuous optimization of buildings
2022: Irving K. Barber Learning Centre Energy Conserving Measures
2022: Chemistry North Heat Recovery Coils
2022: Chemistry Centre Heat Recovery Chiller
2021: Michael Smith Labs Aircuity
2021: Real-Time Energy Management
2021: Centre for Comparative Medicine Optimization
2019: Chemistry North, Fume Hood Optimization
2019: Forestry Sciences Optimization
2019: MOA Heat Recovery Chiller
2017: WiFi Building Controls
2016: LED Lighting Retrofit Campaign
2016: Earth Sciences Building Energy Conservation
2016: Life Sciences Centre Energy Consumption
2015: ICICS/CS Heat Recovery Chiller
2015: Aquatic Centre
2015: Air Filter Replacement Program
2015: Coil Cleaning
2015: Centre for Comparative Medicine – Boiler retrofit
2015: Pharmaceutical Sciences energy conservation
2015: Biological Sciences West
2014: ECOtrek
2014: Building Tune-ups