St. George GHG Inventory: Building Utilities


Welcome to the St. George Campus Greenhouse Gas Inventory for building utilities! This interactive graphing program allows you to examine the utility consumption of individual buildings on St. George Campus, including electricity, heating and water, as well as the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with each.

To ensure that you properly interpret the data, be sure to read the explanatory information below.

If you notice any errors or unusual data, be sure to let us know. We aim to make this information as accurate as possible.


Understanding the interactive GHG inventory


Missing data (a.k.a. Why are some lines broken or coming up blank?)Why is the water data so chaotic for some buildings?
Emissions factors
Years represented
External recoveries
Definin heating and electricity


Missing data (a.k.a. Why are some lines broken or coming up blank?)

  • If a data point is missing for a particular year, that point will show up as blank on the graph, creating a broken line effect.
  • If all data points are missing for a particular building and metric (e.g. all water data for Wycliffe College), the graph will appear blank.
  • Special cases: If a building did not *exist* in a particular year, its consumption will appear as 0, but its area-standardized consumption (e.g. electricity per m2) will show up as blank for that year.


Why is the water data so chaotic for some buildings?

We noticed that too.  It seems that this could have to do with the billing system, which we use to track consumption.  Sometimes buildings get under-billed or over-billed for a given time period, and this is adjusted in the following time period.  We'll continue to investigate! 



Emissions factors

Emissions factors refer to the amount of greenhouse gas production associated with a particular utilities consumption rate.  For example, each kWh of purchased electricity was associated with 0.170 kg of CO2 equivalent in 2008.

The greenhouse gas emissions factors for purchased electricity were obtained from Environment Canada. The web page from which the 1990-2006 data were obtained is now down (formerly found at www.ec.gc.ca/pdb/ghg/inventory_report/2006_report/ta9_7_eng.cfm).

The emissions factors for 2007 and 2008 electricity were obtained from http://www.ec.gc.ca/ges-ghg/default.asp?lang=En&n=EAF0E96A-1#section7.

Since the most recent emissions factors are yet not available, the emissions factors for fiscal years 2008-2009 are currently assumed to be the same as the 2008 emission factors. However, as the more recent factors become available, these will be updated and may alter the emissions calculated for 2008-2009.



Years represented

The years on the x axis represent fiscal years. For example, “2009” represents May 2008 to April 2009.



External recoveries

“External recoveries” refer to the utilities of buildings for which the central university is not responsible (even where utilities are purchased from the University). This designation includes the federated colleges, food service outlets, and parking.



Defining “heating” and “electricity”

Heating values typically represent the energy used to heat a building, whether that energy is delivered in the form of steam, high temperature hot water, low temperature hot water, or gas.

Electricity values typically exclude any building heating and include cooling.

Exceptions:

    • In some cases, the heating value may, counter-intuitively, include some of the building’s cooling as well! This is because certain buildings are partly cooled by “absorption chillers”, which are powered by hot steam. In these cases, the total steam value (which included both “cooling” steam and heating steam), is represented in the “heating” value.
    • A few buildings are heated electrically, so their heating energy is included in electricity