Montreal Gazette - Top honours in the fourth annual TD Go Green challenge

Top honours in the fourth annual TD Go Green Challenge, a national competition inviting Canadian postsecondary students to offer solutions to sustainability issues, have gone to McGill University students David Morris and Omer Dor. Their faculty sponsor was McGill professor Alejandro Rey. The competition, an initiative of the TD Friends of the Environment Foundation, focused this year on sustainability and environmental stewardship on campus.

The Ferrier powerhouse, which provides heat and hot water to McGill, is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases on campus. To remedy this, Morris and Dor proposed creating an Integrated Energy and Food Greenhouse, which would reduce greenhouse gas emissions significantly by redirecting and transforming wasted energy from the powerhouse to help produce local food - crops would be grown on top of the building - and carbonneutral biodiesel to produce sustainable energy.

The team's video can be viewed at www.youtube.com/ watch?v=94i4Hg56Ouc. The prize included a purse of $20,000 for the students, as well as a paid 2011 summer internship with the Friends of the Environment Foundation for each of them; the foundation will award $100,000 to McGill for greening the campus.