So the federal government just announced that they are half way to reaching their Copenhagen emissions goal this week. (You can read the CBC article here ). Not bad.... not bad at all. But unfortunately not good enough. The energy and environment engineers here at uOttawa also just finished crunching some numbers this week. The result, our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are the lowest we have ever recorded - basically since 1974. DATA So let's deconstruct some of the numbers. In 1974, our direct GHG emissions were 27,223 tonnes. (*direct emissions mean everything that we burn here on campus like natural gas, oil, fuel in our cars, etc.) In 2011, our direct GHG emissinos were 15,556 tonnes, a 43% reduction. KYOTO Under Canada's Kyoto obligations, uOttawa would have had to reduced its total emissions by 6% of 1990 levels by 2012. (*total emissions include everything you burn and all the emissions associated with the electricity you use). In the 1990's our t...

WARNING: about to geek out really hard. Beware. It is already pretty impressive when I get to explain to people what I do here at the Sustainability Office on Campus. I can rave for hours about how great it is to be working in a field that is legitimately connected to my field of study- how applicable what I learn in the classroom is to my some of the projects I am working on here at the office. Beware, I am about to go on one of those tangents… concerning the Sustainable Development Committee (SUDCOM) at the University of Ottawa. The committee is comprised of three faculty, five admin staff, two students, and two community members and its role is to provide advice and insight to uOttawa’s Administrative Committee on matters related to best practices and socially responsible behaviour. This boils down to being a committee of persons who seek to make our campus green. The first meeting took place during reading week and went really well—luckily for myself, being that I had s...