Project Background
Many of our campus buildings were built at a time when insulation, air sealing, and thermal bridging were not major concerns. As a consequence, these buildings waste a lot of energy through the building envelope, and buildings are the single largest source of campus greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, natural gas, used primarily for space conditioning, accounts for 92% of Scope 1 and 2 emissions. The University of Waterloo’s Shift Neutral Climate Action Plan provides a roadmap for how to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 and includes an initiative for “Recladding of buildings with high-performance envelopes should be considered whenever undertaking large building retrofits”. The University is therefore looking to identify strategies for improving the building envelope performance of some of its worst buildings. This project also relates to the UN Sustainable Development Goals 7 and 13, for affordable and clean energy and climate action.
Project Examples
- Consulting with Plant Operations to identify a building that has a poorly performing building envelope and assemble any available information on building design and performance.
- Researching recladding options for buildings, with a particular focus on cost-effectiveness, ease of application, thermal performance, durability/ maintenance requirements, and other environmental considerations (e.g. embodied carbon). The goal should be to work toward NetZero Energy Ready or EnerPhit standards.
- Preparing design drawings, installation instructions and/or schematics for the recommended approach.
- Using RetScreen or similar software to model the existing and proposed building envelope performance for energy and emissions.
- Researching how occupants might be impacted by the recladding process: can they continue to use the building, only parts of the building, would some uses be affected more than others?
- Identifying other considerations that should be included in a feasibility study (e.g. asbestos abatement).
- Conducting a high level cost analysis including upfront costs and operational cost savings at current energy prices.
- Researching any best practices from other major institutions that have performed recladding work on similar buildings.
The Sustainability Office can facilitate engagement with Plant Operations to access information on buildings, and to access RetScreen software.