A few short days before the Kyoto accords on climate change took effect in Canada, U of T officially launched its new Sustainability Office on Thursday, February 10, an initiative which the university hopes will match similar offices at Harvard, the University of Michigan, and UBC. U of T’s goal, said representatives of the Sustainability Office, is to exceed the university’s share of Canada’s carbon-reduction commitments under the Kyoto accord.

“The first major project,” said Farouk Kothdiwala, the environmental project manager of the new office, “will be a retrofit of Robarts Library, the Medical Sciences Building, and OISE, replacing over 60,000 lighting units with state-of-the-art, energy-efficient lamps and fixtures.”

Currently, lighting accounts for 26 per cent of energy use at U of T. In total, U of T’s St. George campus alone consumes 214,237 megawatt-hours of electricity and 1,574,676 BTUs of gas, oil, and steam at a cost of approximately $35 million per year. The new retrofit is estimated to save approximately 7.7 million kilowatt hours and $800,000 in energy and maintenance costs, while reducing the university’s production of 130,000 equivalent tonnes of carbon dioxide in greenhouse gases by 2,000 tonnes.

Meanwhile, an anemometer, a device used to measure windspeed, has been mounted on top of Robarts Library and is gathering data to determine whether a wind-powered generator could be put there.

While the university has had an environmental protection policy in place since 1994, U of T’s new sustainability coordinator, Beth Savan, said the new office will increase the speed and scope of environmental projects on campus.

“What’s changing now is that there’s a focal point on campus and a demonstrated university commitment, as opposed to doing things retrofit by retrofit,” said Savan.

The office had been on the drawing board for years but was slogging through U of T’s bureaucracy. Impatient students and faculty banded together and applied independently for a grant from the Toronto Atmospheric Fund. Now with $250,000 from the city and additional support from Eco-Action Project, Environment Canada, Ontario’s Ministry of the Environment, and offices and departments within U of T, the new Sustainability Office has secured funding for its first three years.

“I really feel that our agenda is driven by students,” said Savan. With the preparations for the office begun June 2004, seven students have already won highly prestigious Energy Ambassador Awards from Natural Resources Canada for their work.

“The Sustainability Office is a historic step towards environmental improvement at the University of Toronto,” said Savan, “I look forward to working with staff, students, and faculty to build a cleaner, greener U of T.”