“Mother Nature will only sustain us to a certain extent”

Craig Bakay | Sep 13, 2017

We need to change the way we’re living — we need to sustain,” said St. Lawrence College’s Steve Lapp at the Power in the Climate Era workshop last Saturday at Wintergreen Studios on Canoe Lake Road. “Mother Nature will only sustain us to a certain extent.” After 20 years experience in fuel cells, renewable energy systems and supporting renewable energy options for rural communities in Lesotho and India, Lapp began teaching in 2005 with the newly created Energy Systems Engineering Technology (ESET) program at St. Lawrence’s Kingston campus.

Lapp said the ESET program is essentially about better building efficiency. “It’s one thing to say you want low-carbon buildings, but how do you do that?” he said. “The College saw the need for grads who understand green technology.” To that end, his program supplies graduates to places like Utilities Kingston, school boards and companies to manage retrofits of all kinds, even to the point of new thermostats and light bulbs. “Some of our grads go to solar farms as technicians,” he said. “It’s a great field to get into.” He said the professional life goal of his graduates is essentially to reduce carbon footprints, be that by solar power, more efficient heat pumps, heat exchangers, any and all methods available. “The province has a (carbon) reduction goal of 80 per cent by 2050,” he said. “The only way to achieve that right now is to be more efficient.” And, he said, there is a new job market for those who become proficient in such things. “Our guys aren’t installers, they’re analysts and designers,” he said. “They’re not licensed plumbers and electricians.” But he’s aware that large corporations are taking notice of what they do.

“Almost every big company can reduce its energy costs by 1 per cent,” he said. “And they only have to reduce it by 1 per cent to justify the salary they pay to our grads.” He said right now the cost of putting in a solar system is about the same as buying energy from the grid, but improvements are being made all the time and they’re keeping up with all innovations. But there’s another aspect of the program Lapp is very aware of and keen to promote. “About a third of our students come right out of high school but there’s another third, in their 20s and 30s that are coming back to school,” he said. “Maybe they’ve gone through an apprentice program or the military and experienced an injury.

“But one thing many of our students have in common is that they’re generally very social conscious,” he said. “That’s part of why they’re attracted to a program like this in the first place.