Feasibility Study of Multiple energy retrofits for City of Charlottetown municipal facilities

The City of Charlottetown will contract Honeywell Energy Services Group to study the feasibility of multiple building upgrades at 22 municipal facilities with a total floor area of more than 400,000 square feet. Among these facilities are a police station, a wastewater treatment plant and several arenas. The comprehensive study will evaluate the energy, financial and social benefits of retrofitting measures aimed at reducing building energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and improving occupant comfort and safety.

Potential measures to be studied include ice plant heat-recovery systems, building automation systems, air- and ground-source heat pumps, solar PV, solar air-heating collectors, a biogas co-generation plant, and systems to protect from airborne viral infection spread indoors. This initiative is supported by the city’s Integrated Community Sustainability Plan (2017), which prioritizes renewable energy and energy efficiency in municipal facilities; its Community Energy Plan (2018), which sets the goal of achieving 40% GHG reduction by 2030; and its recent Climate Emergency Declaration (2019).

To support this GMF application, Honeywell conducted an early assessment of eight facilities. Based on this assessment, the initiative will target the following: a 33% reduction in building energy use across the portfolio (roughly 25% from energy-efficiency measures and 8% from renewable energy generation); a 22% reduction in water consumption; and a 717 tCO2e reduction in GHG emissions. If successful, community benefits will include a reduction in the city’s dependence on fossil fuels, decreased facility energy and maintenance costs, increased life expectancy of municipal facilities, improved air quality and stimulus for the local economy. Another potential benefit is increased public environmental awareness through the conversion of a civic centre into a nearly zero-carbon facility featuring a live renewable energy educational lab.

Honeywell was selected through a competitive bidding process to conduct an investment-grade audit of the study buildings, including conceptual designs of the evaluated measures, energy simulations, cost–benefit analyses, and measurement and verification planning. The final study will be reviewed by relevant city departments and two municipal corporations before it is taken to City Council for approval. The city will then sign an energy performance contract (EPC) with Honeywell to implement the selected measures and guarantee the energy savings found in the study. The city will only be billed for the study if it agrees to implement the recommended measures.

Innovative aspect(s):

• The study will evaluate multiple innovative technologies, including cloud-based building automation systems, geothermal, solar air-heating systems, ice plant heat recovery, a live renewable energy lab, and engineered measures to prevent airborne virus spread (a measure that may be of particular interest in light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic).
• The study will be a component of a larger energy performance contract, where the cost of implementation is offset by energy and operational savings; energy performance contracts have not been widely adopted by municipal governments.

Replicability:

The proposed measures and energy performance contract implementation model could be replicated by municipalities across Canada. Because the implemented measures and energy services company are paid back over time,1 energy performance contracts would be of most benefit to municipalities that lack the capacity and financial resources to take on simultaneous energy improvement projects across their building portfolios.