New geothermal rules in Ontario

  By Gregory Bonser | June 13, 2012 - 13:51 | Ontario Regulations
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In May of 2012, Ontario instituted new regulations http://www.e-laws.gov.on.ca/html/regs/english/elaws_regs_120098_e.htm which will dramatically slow down the ability for smaller scale geothermal to be installed in urban areas due to cost and timing issues.  The regulations were introduced suddenly and without known consultation within the industry in reaction to some methane escaping form a geothermal well being drilled in Oakville.

Methane is present in varying quantities underground, as a result of decaying organic matter, and so when we dig or drill into the ground, some comes out.  Generally, since methane is lighter than air, it floats up and away when released from the ground – which can be ecologically problematic, since methane is a powerful greenhouse gas.  However – this was not the reason for the new regulation.  The regulation was put in place due to safety concerns which have been unequally applied to a specific process.

Methane is flammable, and may cause explosions if in a confined space, however, the open air nature of the activity of drilling means there’s a very low risk of explosion (if any at all).  Since methane may escape when ground is disturbed, there’s a risk of escape with deep foundations excavation and drilling and water wells, however those activities have far less stringent requirements.

The new regulations for geothermal involve making a plan, and applying to the Ministry of Environment for an Environmental Compliance Permit.  The plan must be prepared by a professional engineer or geoscientist, must contain plans to manage or capture gas.  The regulation seems to have some merit and was designed with safety in mind, but is unevenly applied across activities and sectors within the Province.

The most troubling element of the regulation is the need to apply to the Ministry for approval, and for the project to be posted on the Environmental Bill of Rights.  Estimates of 3-6 months plus to process applications have been made.  Commonly, Ministry staff note they are understaffed to deal with issues of air pollution, toxic waste dumping and other ecologically harmful activities – so why the rush to have them slow down the process for people looking into installing renewable energy projects?

Conservative energy plans without conservation

  By Gregory Bonser | June 4, 2012 - 14:35 | Electricity, Ontario Regulations, Political proposal
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Tim Hudak, leader of the Ontario Conservative Party has recently released a white paper calling for affordable energy in Ontario. Given that Mr Hudak was part of the Conservative Government who brought us the debt retirement charge bringing about $40 Billion in debt to be paid by the ratepayers of Ontario, one would think he’s well aware that no one has been able to provide affordable energy in Ontario – the costs have always been there, but usually the Government has played tricks to hide the actual costs for the mega projects. We had hope Mr Hudak would recognize this and provide some solid ideas on how we can get a better handle on energy costs in Ontario.
He offers 15 points to his plan – none of which includes encouraging more conservation in Ontario. Demand conservation is the best strategy possible for the government because it’s a soft cost that pays big dividends by saving on infrastructure investment costs. Energy distribution, and even baseload power has proven to be a natural monopoly. While electricity generation was opened up for investment years ago, distribution infrastructure and base load generators remain firmly controlled by government owned monopolies. The private sector did step up and lease Bruce Nuke from the Government, but it was a terrible deal for tax payers, and until the government is willing to sell out taxpayers again, it’s unlikely that the private sector will undertake building baseload power plants, or distribution systems. So if conservation can stall the need for those investments, the dividends go back to the tax payer and ratepayer. Mr Hudak missed the mark in this regard.
His first suggestion is to monetize the government owned generation company and distribution company. If these assets are such a great deal for investors, why wouldn’t the owners (who will be the long term customers) hold on to it? This sort of privatization of public assets is ideologically driven and not in the best interest of the people of Ontario.
The push for nuke mega projects remains, despite all evidence that nuke power is the most expensive when considering life cycle costs (much more to follow on this in the blog at a later time). There’s big money in building nukes and again, the main beneficiary is not the public. As Pickering and Darlington come to the end of their lives, this is becoming increasingly clear – the pollution, cost and long term (millions of year) liabilities are not worth it.
The sole focus on nukes is even more perplexing when followed by a call to eliminate “the non-competitive feed-in tariff program”. The feed in tariff has been the chance to spread costs to private investors and reduce our reliance on OPG for power. It’s also been shown to have added only a fraction of the percentage of costs to our rising energy bills. Because solar is a peak load generator – it’s producing power when it’s most expensive – often more than what the rate paid is, so it can actually make money for the government while providing other opportunities for smaller generators to feed into the grid.
We tried to find something nice to say about this plan, but it’s so ideogically driven despite evidence to the contrary of the proposals, we just can’t find anything. Is there something in there that makes sense to you? Tell us about it in the comments section, because we really hope for the best for Ontario’s energy future!

Toxic fire retardants more harmful than helpful?

  By Gregory Bonser | June 4, 2012 - 12:30 | Indoor Air Quality (IAQ), New construction, Political proposal
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The interiors of buildings are often very polluted places.  Furniture, carpets and wall finishes are often manufactured with chemicals which off gas into the space, and absorbed by the people in the space.  One class of chemicals – fire retardants, are added in large amounts to many products at work and at home, ostensibly for good reasons – to prevent fires.  But are they effective?

A  recent expose http://media.apps.chicagotribune.com/flames/index.html by the Chicago Tribune suggests they are not.  The evidence that fire retardants work is based on an obscure Swedish report from decades ago, and the author of that report says he is not happy with the manipulation of his findings having resulted in such widespread use of these dangerous bio accumulating chemicals.

So where did the push come from?  According to the Tribune, it was from an Association of Fire Marshals – largely funded and directed by lobbyists working for the tobacco industry. When more people smoked, there were many fires sparked by cigarettes – in bed, or other home fabrics, so the tobacco industry was being pressured by regulators to start selling self extinguishing cigarettes.

However, the tobacco industry did not want to do that.  They knew how, but smokers didn’t like them, and it would also mean a change in manufacturing – costing them money, so the tobacco industry shifted the blame.  It wasn’t the cigarette’s fault – it’s that flammable chair you are sitting on.

SO they lobbied to have massive amounts of fire retardants pumped into our household products and our bodies.  TO accomplish this, the co-opted and mislead groups like the Fire Marshalls, created new “fire safety groups” and paid medical professionals to lie at regulatory hearings.  They were successful – regulators couldn’t help but agree because science is always difficult to interpret, and the issue played on emotional triggers by invoking images of burned babies.

The tobacco industry is on the decline, but the lobbyists have found new clients – the manufacturers of the flame retardant chemicals.  They’ve kept up the pressure to continue to add these dangerous chemicals to our products.

As a result, North American children have the world’s highest rates of blood stream contamination by poisonous flame retardants – our new disease of affluence, dramatically upping our risks of cancer to avoid the ridiculously low risk that our heads will spontaneously combust and ignite our pillows, burning down our homes.

Opportunities for improving commercial HVAC

  By Gregory Bonser | May 30, 2012 - 09:11 | Electricity, Energy efficiency, Natural gas
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Commercial buildings use a lot of energy, so it was good to discover that the US DOE recently undertook a study – “Energy Savings and Economics of Advanced Control Strategies for Packaged Air-Conditioning Units with Gas Heat” – http://www.pnnl.gov/main/publications/external/technical_reports/PNNL-20955.pdf to look at opportunities to retrofit packaged AC units with gas heat (commonly known as “roof top units” or RTUs).  These heating and cooling appliances are the big boxes that you may have seen on top of big box stores and most other small to mid sized commercial buildings.  They provide the vast majority of heating and cooling for stores, industrial uses and low rise office facilities, and they tend to use a lot of energy.

The study contemplated updating system controls to include an air side economizer (which uses “free cooling” when outdoor air temperatures allow for it), variable speed fans and demand controlled ventilation (which modulates the ventilation depending on people in the space or indoor CO2 levels).  The upgrades are from a system set up with no economizer, single speed fan and constant volume ventilation.  Their study revealed that these improvements yielded about 20%-30% annual energy savings depending on the building type for Chicago.  (We focused on Chicago, because it is the location with the most similar climate to Toronto, our home town.)  The study suggests the payback for these upgrades is 3 years or less.  RTUs are supposed to last about 10 years, but it’s not uncommon to see 15 – 20 year old units still limping along.  So it’s worth looking into upgrading your RTU if you have them.

Savings from these improved systems are greater in cooling mode than in heating mode, because of the ability to capture free cooling, and the reduced heat gain from an over worked, constant speed fan.  The most significant savings come from demand side ventilation systems – providing about 15% – 25% overall HVAC energy savings (with the other strategies making up the remaining +/- 5% to get to the overall 20%-30% cited above).  This is due to fan energy savings, and heating and cooling energy savings found when modulating the amount of fresh air brought into a building to match the need.

If these “upgrades” to RTUs were made as part of the original equipment installations, the capital costs would be lower and the payback would be shorter.  Good news is that most new designs we see integrate these advanced controls.

The study does not contemplate the impact of an energy recovery ventilator which captures hot or cold energy from exhaust air, and pre-treats incoming ventilation air.  This would change the ventilation strategy from bringing in un-tempered air through the RTUs.

ERVs are required for residential occupancies, but the Ontario Building Code has not made it a requirement for commercial buildings.  This is one instance where industry is ahead of the regulators – most commercial systems we see  now have ERVs as a standard piece of equipment, because they work by saving energy and improving comfort.

Another issue (beyond the scope of the study but worth mention) is the efficiency levels of RTUs.  Historically these have lagged behind other HVAC appliances.  Currently, we don’t know of any RTU that can achieve a heating efficiency of greater than 80%, and cooling SEER of 15-17.  Compare this with residential equipment which can achieve heating efficiency of 90% – 95%, and some AC units claim SEER ratings of up to 26.  Commercial HVAC equipment is larger, and uses more energy + costs more, but the perception seems to be that owners won’t pay for more efficient equipment.  The widespread early adoption of ERVs puts this myth to rest.

Commercial energy users, because of the big costs involved and impact on bottom lines are some of the quickest and most enthusiastic adopters of energy efficiency technology.  The DOE report provides more solid evidence why commercial building owners and tenants want to improve energy efficiency.

 

 

 

How low will it go?

  By Gregory Bonser | April 27, 2012 - 14:44 | Fuel substitution, Natural gas
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For many of us, energy efficiency and renewable energy is the right thing to do for reasons beyond the short term economic impacts.  We know it’s less expensive in the long run for those who make their homes and business more efficient, and also society as a whole in reduced health care costs and lower risks of long term cost escalations from resource scarcity.  Of course, there’s also the benefits on future generations of a clean environment which is very hard to put a price tag on.

 

But for many people, short term costs matter.  It’s hard to justify upgrading a furnace if it’s not going to repay the extra expense for 3 years.  HVAC equipment is far less sexy than stainless steel kitchen appliances, even though we really need the HVAC equipment far more.

 

The price of natural gas (the main source of home heating fuel in the GTA / Ontario, and now an increasing fuel source in electrical generation) plays a big part in people’s decisions to improve the efficiency of their homes and businesses.  With oil and gasoline prices moving ever upward it could make sense that we’d see natural gas prices rise too, but that’s not the case.  In fact, the price today for homeowners in the GTA is about a third of what it was 5 years ago.  Contrast this with oil, which costs almost twice what it did 5 years ago.

 

 

Fuel price summary for 2006 - 2012

 

There’s plenty of good and bad reasons why this is the case (which we’ll explore another time), but regardless, the impact on building efficiencies and renewable energy technology has been to damper growth, and maintain or increase pollution and waste.

 

What was Village Technologies ?

  By villagetechadmin | March 30, 2012 - 17:10 | Uncategorized
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Village Technologies was a small residential energy efficiency company.  It was founded in 2005 with great ambition and hope for the future.  We had numerous successes and learned many lessons.   Over the years we successfully undertook home retrofit projects, installed numerous types of renewable energy systems and helped home owners and small business to save energy and gain exposure as early adopters.  We focused on a new niche market, often found ourselves figuring out a lot on the fly.

 

Over time urban home heating costs dropped due to depressed natural gas prices, and warmer winters.  At the same time, feed in tariff policies and energy conservation incentive program mismanagement disrupted price signals to an emerging industry.  Home owners were holding off on major investments, meanwhile the local contractors awareness and ability grew, and more people were offering many services at a range of prices.

 

We continued to undertake projects until 2011, but growth was slow, and the management team broke apart, and ultimately the founding partners have all moved to other opportunities.

 

This blog is maintained by the former Chief Technology Officer, Gregory Bonser, who is currently working with Inviro Engineered Systems – http://www.invirosystems.ca/ on projects related to LEED, Commissioning, Energy Auditing, and Energy Measurement and Verification.

I am maintaining this site to share information about energy policy and regulations, high performance building technology and inspiring design solutions.