University of Calgary
Green Scene
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Green buildings are living labs
EVDS professor Jim Love is helping students like Eduard Cub Montanya learn about high-performance buildings.Through its green building initiative, the University of Calgary is creating a healthier environment in which to work and learn, while providing students with relevant experience in the rapidly evolving field of high-performance green buildings.Canadians spend approximately 95 percent of their time indoors and buildings account for an estimated 35 percent of our CO2 emissions. Yet many new technologies designed to decrease emissions and improve indoor environmental quality are introduced with little field assessment. Under the supervision of Jim Love, Chair in Sustainable Building Technologies and a professor in the Faculty of Environmental Design, students such as Eduard Cub Montanya and Mike Gestwick are using the University of Calgary’s Child Development Centre as a living laboratory for research on green building systems. Montanya was the lead author of an article on lessons learned about under-floor air systems which was published in the journal of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-conditioning Engineers, circulated to more than 50,000 practitioners worldwide. Prior to the construction of the Child Development Centre, which achieved a LEED Platinum Certification, only one field study of ventilation performance had been published despite approximately 500,000 square metres of under-floor air distribution systems being installed annually in North America. Gestwick, also a member of U of C’s solar decathlon team, did his thesis on a method for comparing simulated models of energy use during design with actual measured energy use. Also known as “calibration,” this is an area of critical importance in green building design and operations. “This is the kind of exceptional background U of C is providing students through its green building initiatives, while contributing important knowledge to the field. At the same time, the university has a building with a per-square-metre energy cost that is about 20 percent of the average for U of C buildings while designed to provide a superior indoor environment,” says Love. To learn more about sustainability initiatives on campus visit www.ucalgary.ca/sustainability.
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November 12, 2009