Sustainability. Carbon neutral. Lower emissions. Reduce, reuse, recyle.

Heard those a million times?

One of my favorite modules this term was called Thermofluids, taught by professor Peter Childs. We covered tons of content through lectures, learning the fundamentals of many things relating to the behavior of fluids (liquid and gas flow) on earth.

What I liked most about the class was, surprisingly, not learning pipe flow equations, Bernoulli’s Equation, or the difference between laminar and turbulent flow, but it was simply gaining the skills and knowledge required to quantitatively support my advocacy of sustainability.

Everyone “does their best” to make eco-friendly choices, myself included, but before this module I never quite understood what all these buzzwords we hear all the time mean, nor did I fully grasp the effect (or lack thereof) that changing our behaviour and practices have on the planet.

One of our two major case studies for the class had to do with carbon emission, and just generally the energy consumption in a house of our choosing. We were assigned to choose a housing archetype and propose four interventions, aiming to make the house more energy efficient, and ideally, carbon neutral.

This is where I went with it.