Vancouver Sustainable Energy
The five stacks of the Southeast False Creek Neighbourhood Energy Utility reach up toward the Cambie Street Bridge like the fingers of a steel giant. At night the “fingertips” – LED lights attached to each stack – glow in shades from blue to red, according to how much energy is being consumed in the roughly 12-block neighbourhood developing around Vancouver’s Olympic Village. The facility’s sloping steel roof makes it seem like the structure is actually helping hold up the bridge, instead of just sitting under it. Its west wall is almost all glazed, so that passersby can look at the pipes and equipment inside. Perhaps it would be a stretch to call a boiler room public art, but the effect adds a novel and surprising element to the streetscape. The city worked with Walter Francl Architecture Inc. to make the building as appealing as possible, explains Chris Baber, the city’s sustainability officer. “People were worried that it would, you know, smell like a sewer.”
This utility is the first in North America to capture heat from liquid waste and redistribute it to the surrounding neighbourhood, where it’s used for space heating and hot water. It’s an example of what’s commonly referred to as “district energy,” which is not to be confused with renewable energy; it refers to a system where a number of homes, businesses and industries share energy provided by one or more central sources. District energy can include renewable energy sources such as geothermal, wind or solar, or non-renewable sources such as the many systems that rely on natural gas. But because district energy is based on the principle of sharing, it creates economies of scale that make some renewable technologies more economically feasible.
For example, sewer heat exchange is so mechanically complex that it would be inefficient to build such a system for a single building, but with a 12-block neighbourhood hooked in at Southeast False Creek – which the city estimates will eventually be home to some 10,000 people – it starts to make more sense. And buildings can be both producers and consumers of energy: waste heat from industrial processes or large institutions such as schools or hospitals can be moved to where it is needed. District energy is also more flexible than the current prevailing system; it’s easier to upgrade, add to and retrofit.
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