The Green Review

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the lives of everyone over the past 18 months. With respect to the UNB community, the pandemic forced the shutdown of normal campus operations on both the Fredericton (UNBF) & Saint John (UNBSJ) campuses. While both campuses have now partially reopened at different levels, the impacts from this pandemic on the university have and continued to be far reaching. This blog entry will be highlighting some of those impacts with a focus on sustainability and climate change.  

• Utilities

The first area that has had noticeable impacts are consumption of utilities (electricity, water & steam used for heating/cooling operations) on both campuses. The year-over-year (YOY) change in consumption of utilities between the 2019/2020 (mostly pre-covid) and the 2020/2021 (full year under covid protocols) on both campuses is stark. Consumption of electricity declined 18% and 9.5% on the UNBF & UNBSJ respectively. Consumption of water declined 35% on UNBF, but, surprisingly increased 2% on UNBSJ. Finally, consumption of steam decreased 9% and 14.5% on the UNBF and UNBSJ campuses respectively.  We should note this stark drop of in consumption with the fact that electricity, water, and energy used for heating/cooling was still being used by UNB students, staff and faculty, however, it was from their individual homes, not on campus. As such, while the COVID-19 pandemic has been reducing campus utility consumption, overall, there was likely little reduction being made. Nonetheless, from the perspective of UNB becoming more sustainable as an institution and being more efficient with utility consumption, allowing for remote and hybrid working may be a means to assist in this process.  

• Energy Consumption

The second area that had a noticeable impact was energy consumption on both campuses. While some energy (electricity and steam in particular) is already encapsulated in the utilities section, energy also includes fuels used on campus in transportation (gasoline & diesel), on the UNBF campus heating plant (CHP) and, for other uses on campus buildings (i.e., propane for cooking). To allow for analysis, all energy consumption on both campuses was converted to an equivalent kilowatt hour (ekWh). YOY energy consumption on the UNBF campus declined 15% led by large declines in fuel inputs into the CHP and in electricity consumption. As noted, before, steam utility consumption declined 9% YOY, so it makes sense that fuel used to make steam also declined. On the UNBSJ campus, total energy consumption declined 12% YOY led again by large declines in steam and electricity consumption.  

• Green House Gas Emissions

These utility and energy consumption changes, largely due to the impacts of COVID-10, tie into the final area that experienced significant impacts at UNB in terms of sustainability and climate change, greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). GHGs on the UNBF campus declined 36% YOY, to 13,855 metric tons. While this is a dramatic decline, it is still ~2,700 metric tons above the 2025 target, signifying there is still a lot of work to do to hit our UNBF GHG goals. On the UNBSJ campus, GHG emissions declined 25% YOY to 2,984 metric tons. This value meets the 2025 target, however, both campus GHG emissions are expected to rebound once campus operations return to normal.  

The following table shows the figures reported in this blog post.
 

^{*Data Availability Incomplete} 

As we begin to learn of the larger impacts that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on our daily lives and operations, UNB and the community that makes up our institution can learn some about how to make the university more sustainable going forward.