The District of Houston could dramatically reduce its use of natural gas at the leisure centre, resulting in cost savings and lower greenhouse gas emissions, an engineering company representative has told council.
And it would do so by converting the facility by fully adding heat pump technology which essentially uses electricity to transfer heat to where it’s needed.
Ian Welle from Polar Engineering, which has done work for the District before, told council in a presentation that heat pump technology installation also qualifies for grants from BC Hydro through the provincial government to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The facility does have heat pump technology now but Welle produced a graph showing that when it stopped working in late 2019, the amount of natural gas consumed rose dramatically when the facility had to rely on backup boilers for heat.
A pie chart shown by Welle further indicated that of the 3,642.3 gigajoules of natural gas consumed a year by the facility, the pool consumes 1,696.57 gigajoules, or approximately one-third, of that amount.
An installation of the kind recommended by Welle would see electrical consumption increase from 661,920 kilowatt hours a year to 828,883.34 kilowatt hours but natural gas consumption drop from 3,696.24 gigajoules a year to just 282.34 gigajoules.
That would result in overall energy cost from the current $98,706.42 to $74,626.67.
Carbon dioxide emissions would decline dramatically from 183 tonnes a year to 14 tonnes.
Welle forecast a cost of $337,927 for the installation he envisioned, noting that the BC Hydro/provincial grant program would provide $100,840 to reduce the District’s overall financial commitment.
Crucially, Welle also provided figures indicating that the cost of natural gas will increase.
And, in response to a question from Councillor Troy Reitsma, Welle confirmed that his installation recommendation is designed to work in parallel to the facility’s current geothermal heating system.
As is council’s protocol in hearing presentations and delegations, council made no decision but staff is following up on a request from Mayor Shane Brienen for more information about past heating systems.