Zibi’s reveal of new heating, cooling system puts community on map as leader in fighting climate change
Posted May 13, 2022 01:07:00 AM.
Zibi, the Ottawa-Gatineau community straddling the Ottawa River, is putting the National Capital Region on the map as a leader in combating climate change as the first carbon-neutral community in Canada.
On Wednesday, May 11, members of Zibi Community Utility team revealed the new heating and cooling system, known as a District Energy System, which will be used to provide energy to the entire Zibi property, which is 34 acres.
It’s an innovation that is rarely considered for heating in cold climates, and is one of the only a few District Energy Systems in North America to meet 100 per cent of the community’s heating needs without fossil fuels.
As Scott Demark, president of the Zibi Community Utility, explains, the system borrows low-grade post-industrial waste for the heating of the buildings from the nearby Kruger plant, and takes water from the Ottawa River to cool the buildings.
“Our individual buildings don’t have chillers and boilers, so they don’t have furnaces in the individual buildings,” Demark told The Sam Laprade Show on Thursday, May 12. “Instead we have a centralized plant where we make heating and cooling energy, and we move that to all of the buildings around Zibi.”
This approach, however, doesn’t require new hardware.
“We’re not using some new machine,” Demark said. “All we’re doing is taking a bunch of things that already exist and we’re just using them in a more intelligent way.”
As of now, Zibi already has six buildings that are occupied — three on the Ottawa side and three on the Gatineau side.
Full completion of the site, however, isn’t expected to be until 2035.
Listen to the full interview with Scott Denmark below:
