{"id":1568,"date":"2025-06-26T15:00:59","date_gmt":"2025-06-26T19:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/sustainable-energy\/?p=1568"},"modified":"2025-07-18T10:07:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-18T14:07:12","slug":"carleton-sustainability-team-helps-cornwall-tackle-climate-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/sustainable-energy\/2025\/carleton-sustainability-team-helps-cornwall-tackle-climate-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Carleton Sustainability Team Helps Cornwall Tackle Climate Change"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Carleton Sustainability Team Helps Cornwall Tackle Climate Change\n <\/h1>\n \n \n <\/header>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

As Canadian summers become hotter, the subsidized housing units in Cornwall, Ontario struggle to stay cool with poorly insulated homes and window air conditioners. These same homes are reliant on carbon-emitting natural gas furnaces that are worsening the climate problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With more than 100 townhouses needing upgrading, Cornwall turned to students in Carleton\u2019s Sustainable Energy graduate program<\/a> for help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis program is unique in that it\u2019s one of the oldest interdisciplinary programs of its kind that brings together both the policy and technical knowhow needed to develop practical solutions to climate change,\u201d explained Daniel Rosenbloom, the Rosamond Ivey Research Chair in Sustainability Transitions, who led the class. \u201cIt marries engineering insights with the policy, social and economic dimensions that equally need to be brought to bear to make those innovations and solutions real, to make them implementable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As part of their capstone project, engineering and public policy students collaborated to come up with a plan to retrofit the Cornwall housing project to make it more efficient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThe problem we wanted to solve was to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions in the [housing project] to match Cornwall\u2019s goal of net zero emissions by 2050,\u201d explained engineering student Akkash Elagampalayam Dhanabal. \u201cWe reviewed existing studies and conducted primary technical and policy research to come up with estimations and assumptions about the project.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Echo Xie and Guy Brodsky, students in the policy section of the program, worked with Akkash on the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe recommended a mass retrofit for all of the social housing units where there is existing electrical capacity, as well as a smaller-sized heat pump retrofit for the units where there isn\u2019t sufficient new capacity available,\u201d said Brodsky. \u201cWe also recommended improving the building envelope and including cellular shades and attic insulation to bring heating and cooling loads down.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a presentation to Cornwall city council, the group estimated the work would cost about $2.4 million and would offer an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is another step towards getting one of our climate action goals done,\u201d said Cornwall\u2019s environmental services division manager Stephen Romano. \u201cWe\u2019re taking the work seriously and want to move forward with it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The students worked closely with Jesse Good, the chair of Cornwall\u2019s Environment and Climate Change Committee and an alumnus of the program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI wanted to work with these students because I know that they\u2019re capable of developing some really creative outside-the-box solutions, which are grounded and also real-world,\u201d said Goode.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Echo Xie found the real-world collaboration was a valuable learning experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe see the challenges our societal partners are facing and we\u2019re trying to use what we learned in the program to help them solve a problem. That\u2019s one of the reasons I really enjoyed this project.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As Canadian summers become hotter, the subsidized housing units in Cornwall, Ontario struggle to stay cool with poorly insulated homes and window air conditioners. These same homes are reliant on carbon-emitting natural gas furnaces that are worsening the climate problem. With more than 100 townhouses needing upgrading, Cornwall turned to students in Carleton\u2019s Sustainable Energy graduate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1571,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[41,64,42,63,65,60,44,61],"class_list":["post-1568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-carleton-university","tag-graduate-degree-in-climate-policy","tag-graduate-programs","tag-masters-in-clean-energy","tag-masters-in-renewable-energy","tag-masters-in-sustainable-energy","tag-sustainable-energy","tag-sustainable-energy-masters-program"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/sustainable-energy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/sustainable-energy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/sustainable-energy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/sustainable-energy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/sustainable-energy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1568"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/sustainable-energy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1572,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/sustainable-energy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1568\/revisions\/1572"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/sustainable-energy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/sustainable-energy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/sustainable-energy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/sustainable-energy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}