U of S faces challenge of reducing emissions while delivering heating, cooling and power to more than 4 million square feet of indoor space.
“We know that any changes would be a monumental undertaking,” said Wade Epp, the university’s associate vice-president of services.
A natural gas plant is used to generate steam for heating. Electricity is used to cool water in warmer months for air conditioning. The campus currently incurs utility bills in the range of $27 million a year to service about four million square feet of interior space — an area about six times the size of Saskatoon’s Midtown shopping mall. Beyond what most people would think of as the campus proper, Epp said District Energy Systems also handles Royal University Hospital and the Jim Pattison Children’s Hospital.
“So the quicker we can start to create a pathway to what that might look like and be able to analyze it puts us in the best position possible to achieve that target,” he said.Article content