Impressive programs for reducing greenhouse gas emissions are being carried out at campuses across Canada. Hundreds of millions of dollars has gone into developing green buildings and upgrading the existing building stock (pagel8). An especially fascinating approach has been taken at the University of British Columbia. The new CIRS building collects heat from the roof of a poorly insulated building next door - energy that would otherwise go up to warm the heavens. Nancy Knight of UBC suggested that that this concept of networking buildings to circulate waste heat could be applied beyond universities into dense urban areas. Instead of retrofitting an older building's envelope to be more efficient, it might make more economic sense to simply draw off the heat from the roof and recycle it.
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