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They are the first generation to be asked, and ironically, they will have to be the last.
In the face of devastating effects of climate change, a Fanshawe professor said it will have to be up to this generation to fix the climate crisis the world is facing or else.
“We are in the midst of a planetary crisis. There is a thin veneer of a shell around our planet and we treat that as an open sewer,” said Tom Davis, a professor in the college’s school of building technology, who plans to work with his students to accomplish what hasn’t ever been done before at the college. “It needs to be solved on their watch.”
Buildings are one of the worst offenders, he said, causing up to forty per cent of carbon emissions, he said.
“We have been looking at vehicle emissions standards, but nobody is looking at building emission standards,” he said.
Davis, who was trained by former U.S. vice-president Al Gore and the Climate Reality Project as a volunteer leader with a mission to encourage urgent action on climate change, is determined to make a difference.
“I want my students to engage. I want to personally engage and tackle big problems,” he said. “And my students will be able to enter a job place with skills that have never been needed in the past.”
Those plans include the construction, starting this fall, of an on-campus two-storey building that will be constructed to building standards expected to be in place by 2050. It will incorporate sustainable building design concepts and be built as a passive house, a rigorous standard for energy efficiency, utilizing wind and solar energy.
“It will never be connected to a (power) grid,” Davis said.
The engineer and his students also have plans to retrofit Fanshawe’s Kestrel Court student residence with the intention of making the units net zero, meaning they will produce as much energy as they consume.
The townhouses were built as rentals and were not energy efficient, Davis said.
“Kestrel Court is a poster child for the condition of housing today,” he said. “The nice thing about students living in these residences is they get to see the world of their future.”
In Canada, he said, it is a big problem. There are 14.5 million homes that don’t meet building code standards that will be in place by 2030 as part of Canada’s commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 50 per cent.
The residence project will undergo what is known as “a deep energy retrofit,” which will include the installation of highly insulated exterior walls to make it airtight.
“It has been done only once; there is one home in Canada that has been retrofit back to net zero,” he said.
Londoners, he said, spend $1.5 billion on their energy needs every year.
There are simple measures homeowners can take incrementally to make their homes more efficient.
Installing aerators on taps and change toilets and shower heads to low flow will make a difference, he said. A quick shower also is more energy efficient than a bath.