Energy Ambassadors

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Thanks to student-mentor team, school district sees the light

The recipe for major conservation action in the Qualicum School District was surprisingly simple: four ambitious high school students, one facility mentor, a pinch of BC Hydro tools and expertise, and lots of hard work.

The result was a plan that sparked $200,000 in energy-efficient lighting upgrades for the district.

"We weren't expecting that much from the school district, not by a long shot," says 18-year-old Kevin Boorer, one of the four students behind the upgrades.

"We're a tiny little district, so the money's even more significant," says John Girard, the school district's maintenance electrician and mentor extraordinaire.

BC Hydro gets things rolling

It all began when a BC Hydro representative visited Kwalikum Secondary School in late 2007 about the possibility of partnering with the school district. The idea was to introduce to the district the Energy Ambassadors program, which gives student teams and their mentors the tools and technical training to conduct building energy usage reviews and carry out campaigns to promote conservation.

The program had already been carried out successfully in dozens of other B.C. districts since it kicked off in 2002, but not in Qualicum.

Teacher Eileen Lo pitched the idea to her Grade 11 son Chris Lo-Pryke, and he roused the interest of buddies Boorer, Cory Binnersley, and Sam Ries. Participation was a no-brainer to the group of proactive students who already had a keen interest in conservation.

The student perspective

The program required they find a mentor, and Girard was eager to step up to the plate. He credits the program for allowing the students to decide how to approach the project.

"They see things happening with the environment that they don't like and they realized this may be a way to start things moving in the right direction," he says. "It was a good learning curve right from the start. They decided to look at a selection of four schools, from the oldest right up to the newer ones. We wanted to get a cross-section of what we had."

Along with their own school, the Kwalikum student team toured French Creek Elementary School, Nanoose Bay Elementary School and Oceanside Middle School, collecting data on the building type and age, jotting down heating and ventilation details and noting lighting fixture types.

Boorer was particularly surprised to learn how much energy is lost to ventilation. The group also discovered that the schools could benefit from having more energy-efficient lighting.

"The program was a good eye-opener for the kids. I think they learned a lot; I know I learned a lot and I'm in and out of those buildings everyday," says Girard.

Show us the money

But knowing the problems, and proposing solutions, was only the first step. The students still had to convince the school district to come up with the money.

In front of the board in late March, the students armed with a Powerpoint presentation – explained first that $200,000 worth of lighting upgrades would save them about 25 per cent on their energy bills each year. They also stressed that energy-saving improvements were going to become standard in the near future, so the sooner they did the upgrades, the more money they'd save.

"By 2010, we won't be able to get the replacement parts for the existing lighting, so the students said, 'Why not get a head start on the savings'," says Girard. "It made sense to us and it made sense to the school board too."

About a month after the presentation, they heard that the board had slated the funds from their Capital Projects Funding. Around the same time, they found out the Ministry of Education would be funding six energy-efficiency upgrades at $400,000.

Now, when Boorer graduates this year, he knows he'll be leaving a legacy in the schools he has spent so many of his formative years in.

"We have made a fair difference there," he says.