Ottawa Citizen
Summary
We continue to build thermal electric generating stations and throw away the heat. The recent plan is to build 4,800 MW of nuclear generation at the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station, in the middle of nowhere, and throw away about 5,000 MW of heat. If built near Toronto, there would be enough heat for the whole city.
These are not fuzzy ideas. Locally, pulp and paper mill closures in Thurso, Cornwall and Portage du Fort have eliminated markets for more than three million tonnes a year of local forest and sawmill residues: trees and residues not suitable for lumber. About 120,000 tonnes a year would heat the currently renovated government district heating system in Ottawa. A drop in the bucket, but a start to help the environment and local economy, with lots left for expansion in other communities, making better forest management affordable.
What is missing to enable these improvements are thermal energy networks or district heating systems — the dominant form of space heating in Sweden, Finland and Denmark and much of northern Europe. These networks, just insulated pipes in the ground, harvest and distribute otherwise wasted resources to heat buildings.
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