PETERBOROUGH, ONT. — Fleming College will receive over $12 million in infrastructure and research funding from the provincial government to make facilities more energy efficient and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
The college will receive a total of $12.1 million from the Greenhouse Gas Campus Retrofits Program, which includes $6.2 million from the Innovation Grant Fund to fund the Fleming College Emissions Reduction Initiative; $1.5 million from the Retrofits Grant Fund for Cap and Trade Non-Participants; and a $4.4-million repayable loan from the Interest-Free Loan Fund.
According to a release, the college will install a new geothermal heating and cooling system at the Sutherland Campus to help reduce GHG emissions.
The $6.2 million will go towards installing a closed loop vertical borehole geothermal system and upgrades to the Kawartha Trades and Technology Centre that will include rooftop solar and wind energy as well as the implementation of new technologies such as an Internet of Things lab.
The remaining funding will be used for additional GHG reducing initiatives as well as the creation of a low carbon demonstration site that will support the skills development of students. The project is expected to be completed by spring 2019.
The province has also awarded Fleming’s Centre for Sustainable Municipalities a $500,000 research grant for a portfolio of projects designed to accelerate the development of advanced asset management technologies, the release added.
“Municipalities own almost 60 per cent of Canada’s core public infrastructure,” said Grant Murphy, manager of the Centre for Sustainable Municipalities, in a statement.
“New state-of-the-art technologies provide opportunities for municipalities to optimize the management and operation of these assets. There is a real potential to get municipalities plugged in to transformative technologies.”
The funding is part of the Government of Ontario’s Colleges Applied Research and Development Fund, administered by the Ontario Centres of Excellence in the Stream 1 College Strategic Sector/Cluster/Technology Platform Program.
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