CNC earns global award for energy efficiency

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How did CNC stand out from the rest? It came down to low-cost efficiency moves, like making sure heating and cooling weren’t happening at the same time, monitoring when pumps were working, switching some cars to electric, and more. While these changes individually may seem small, they all add up to make a tremendous impact.

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“We saved 2.2 million kilowatt hours annually, which doesn’t mean a whole lot to everyone, but that’s about 24 million bagels toasted every single year,” Bigelow said.

What makes the award even more impressive is that the campus grew, but energy efficiency improved anyways. Bigelow explained this all comes down to carefully managing how your energy is being spent and finding every opportunity you can to improve efficiency.

“96% of our emissions come from our buildings, another 4% come from our fleet and our paper consumption and whatnot. so we’ve been working towards a higher recycled content paper, 30% versus 0%. And we’ve also been working on electrifying our fleet and putting electric vehicle chargers out in our more rural campuses to help support those communities adopt this newer technology as well,” Bigelow said.

While these changes mean big things for CNC as a whole, they also impact the individual student. Things like better lighting with LED lighting or improved heating are definitely noticeable in the day-to-day student life, but CNC’s Marketing and Communications Executive Director Mark Karjaluoto explained sometimes the changes are far more noticeable.

“There can be brand new buildings like Nahoonai-a, our Indigenous student housing building, that was designed for a very specific level of energy efficiency. That’s a new building, for example. However, we may have other buildings that over time, as they get upgraded, we’re looking for opportunities to be able to make improvements that not only will maintain the function of the building, but make sure that it can be comfortable for those who are working or learning inside of it,” Karjaluoto said.

While the award definitely marks an incredible milestone for CNC, both Bigelow and Karjaluoto said this is just the start of their energy saving initiatives.

“We’re not done what we’re doing. We’re starting to near an end for those low cost initiatives. So it is going to take a little more work,” Bigelow said.