Taking the heat

Taking the heat: "

Two stories by Jeff Lee in the Sun worth emphasizing:

Olympic Village’s heat-from-sewage utility a monetary success

Vancouver’s sewage heat-generated utility in Southeast False Creek has become so economical that it is now charging homeowners less than what they would pay BC Hydro.

In what city engineers said is a happy and surprising discovery, the cost of operating the facility has dropped by 40 per cent while recovery from heat generated from sewage pipes has risen.

As a result, the utility, which provides heat to all of the Olympic Village as well as surrounding commercial and residential buildings, has already met its target of being price-competitive with BC Hydro, Brian Crowe, an assistant city engineer, told city council Thursday.

Next March Hydro will raise electricity rates across the province to about $87 per kilowatt hour. But the city’s utility, which services about 1,600 homes and businesses, is able to offer a price of $84 per kilowatt hour and still make a reasonable profit for the city, Crowe said.

“There can be no argument now that this a cost-competitive way of providing heat,” he said. “It sends a signal that green initiatives don’t have to be expensive to work.”

The utility was created when the Olympic Village was built. It harnesses heat from both neighborhood sewage systems and a main sewer line from the downtown core. Using heat pumps, the utility then transfers the energy to buildings on its grid in the form of steam. None of the Olympic Village has been wired for electric baseboard heaters.

Crowe said the result has been a decrease in greenhouse gas emissions in the project by 64 per cent, while being cost-competitive with other forms of energy.

And today, an announcement of the plan to promote energy-saving home upgrades using a property-tax mechanism. Having been part of the Greenest City Task Force, it’s great to see some of these ideas reach fruition.

Vancouver’s energy plan to include home retrofits

The City of Vancouver expects to begin a home energy retrofit program next year in which it will finance renovations and allow homeowners to pay for them through property taxes. …

The entire retrofit program is designed to be self-financing with no cost to city taxpayers, deputy city manager Sadhu Johnston said. Homeowners who participate would repay the money with interest calculated to cover administration and financing.

In return, the homeowner benefits from lower utility bills. In time, those savings will exceed the cost of the improvements, he said.

Robertson said the city is still working out the mechanics of how the program will work. The city will seek requests for proposals from banking institutions that will administer the financing. But for now, a private businessman will kick-start the program by providing upwards of $6 million in seed financing … The program is expected to start sometime next year with a pilot program that could see upwards of 600 homes qualify for retrofits.

The repayment costs, spread out over a number of years, would be added to the property tax bill …. the financial liability would be tied to the property’s land title and would stay with the house, not the homeowner.

The plan is part of a suite of aggressive green energy programs the city plans to roll out in 2011, including a pilot “smart grid neighbourhood” to manage and reduce energy consumption on a district-by-district basis.

More here.

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