Kwantlen strives for sustainability months after signing letter

By Sartaaj Bhullar

Garden boxes are prepped and ready at KPU's Surrey campus. (Photo by Sartaaj Bhullar)

In October 2019, Kwantlen Polytechnic University became the first higher education organization to pledge to reduce carbon emissions by 2050.

KPU president Alan Davis signed the Global Climate letter after being told about the opportunity by a KPU faculty member, the Metro Vancouver university said in a news release.

Although the oil and gas industry are important contributors to the economy, they also produce 27 per cent of Canadian emissions, the federal government says. In order to protect the environment, the government believes Canada has to reduce oil and gas methane emissions by 40 to 45 per cent by 2025.

It is a university’s job to make students and the public aware of the importance of switching from gas to electricity along with reducing carbon, energy consumption and switching to carbon free resources, Davis said in an interview.

Davis believes that universities are constantly trying to make society better but if they cannot take a leadership role in classrooms and raise public awareness on climate change, then universities are in trouble.

Harman Bajwa, a marketing major at KPU, believes signing the global climate letter should lead to increased opportunities for students to learn about sustainability.

“I feel they may need to be educated on the whole issue of climate change and how to become more environmentally conscious,” Bajwa said. “Rather than doing your own research about it as I am doing in all three of my classes, maybe a class should be introduced to educate students on the issue.”

KPU is following Bill 44, which is the “Greenhouse Gas Reduction Targets Act” and makes reduction of greenhouse gases a legal requirement. By 2050, KPU will attempt to reduce greenhouse gas emission by 80 per cent below the 2007 number.

One-tenth of Canada’s emissions are due to generating electricity, the government says.

“We’ve been steadily reducing our carbon footprint, particularly with respect to energy use,” Davis said. “We replace things like boilers and chillers and when you do that you go for much higher efficiency. Change all your lightbulb just like in your house you can use light bulbs that last a lot longer and use less energy and you can keep doing that.”

KPU’s sustainability efforts have been noticed by students around campus as well.

“The garden by the library for sure helps with sustainability,” Bajwa said. “I’ve also noticed they’ve kept the forest by the pond which provides a home for small animals, something I haven’t seen on many other schools’ campuses.”

KPU pledges to be active in introducing climate change research and skill creation for both students and faculty members. Davis hopes to do this through areas such as research in sustainable and agriculture research. The university’s senate supports a budget for the upcoming year including an increase to KPU’s research, Davis said.

“So, by increasing the support to our research we can do better research.” Davis said. “Since October is a very short time, we’ve been only starting the budget but there’s been a ground swell around KPU to invest more in research generally that will help support those researchers.”

The letter commits KPU to increase the delivery of environmental and sustainable education across the curriculum, campus and community outreach programs.

Davis said new programs take a long time to develop and KPU now tries to add a sustainability angle to every new program. A revised, shortened blacksmithing program for horses is one example.

“They’re looking at ways they can always be sustainable and reduce the energy because it takes a lot of energy to heat up the fire and build the horseshoes. It’s a very high-tech process,” Davis said.

Transportation makes up 24 per cent of the greenhouse gases in Canada, the government says. Davis believes advocating for improvements to transit for students helps reduce carbon emissions and says the transit system needs to be expanded.

KPU’s goal is to ensure every new curriculum considers the environment, Davis said. By signing the letter, Davis hopes it shows how serious KPU is about sustainability.

“For instance, every student has to be exposed to the issue of sustainability before they graduate,” Davis said. “When you look at the learning outcomes of any program, we want to see students are going to be aware of issues related to sustainability and are going to know how to approach the issue and engage in discussion around it, if not actually do it.”

Since signing the letter back in October, Davis says many of the changes are still to come to KPU regarding reducing the carbon footprint but there are a lot of issues that have to be fixed.

“There is issue also with increasingly use of computers, both individual devices and servers because they’re pretty high energy costs,” Davis said. “As computing has evolved and I understand that quantum computing is coming along and that’s got to really beat up computing in much lower energy, we got to be aware of that and see where there are ways to save energy with using our computers.”

Every time something is renovated, reviewed or renewed at KPU, it provides the university with an opportunity to hardwire the latest thinking with respect to sustainability, reduction and carbon usage, Davis says.

Davis is looking at other aspects that will help KPU reduce their carbon emissions in order to reach their goal by 2050, this includes suggestions made by students.

“I’ve noticed a lot of professors handing out papers, two to three per class in some cases,” Bajwa said. “With everything being digital, why not put it all on Moodle? Fill in the blank sheets can easily be made into Excel files to avoid using too much paper.”