Tobi Olowoyo | MEL Candidate | Dec 16, 2022
Mentor: Steven Fetterly, Impact Engineering
Abstract
As the world is trending towards a fight against global warming, many nations are developing pathways to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change. For example, Canada’s government introduced Canada’s 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan, which provides a roadmap for the Canadian economy to achieve 40-45% emission reductions. Provinces identify the sectors in their economy that contribute the greatest to emissions and focus on that. For example, the city of Vancouver in BC, attributes most of its emissions to the building sector. In light of this, there is an aggressive pursuit of the decarbonization of buildings.
BCIT, as an institution in BC, has long-term aspirational Green House Gas (GHG) reduction target plans aimed at a 50% emissions reduction by 2030. To support the development of their decarbonization goals, BCIT commissioned impact engineering to create a roadmap to meet these goals. This project focuses on a general study of BCIT’s District Energy System (DES), which is 36% of the campus’s total GHG emissions. The project reviews the impact of the proposed electrification project of the DES while also focusing on the impact of associated buildings. In addition, an energy study is carried out to determine the impact of reconnecting stand-alone buildings to the DES and the feasibility of a low-temperature conversion of all systems connected to the DES.