Industry News

10 Energy Mix

Summary

A district energy utility north of Toronto is about to begin construction on the world’s largest wastewater energy transfer (WET) installation, a project that is expected to reduce climate pollution by 30,000 tonnes per year, significantly reduce gas consumption, and supply heating and cooling for seven to eight million square feet of space in Markham, Ontario.

And the piece of the puzzle that sealed the deal was a carbon contract for difference, a mechanism that will protect the business assumptions behind the project from future changes in the federal carbon price.

Markham District Energy (MDE), a thermal utility owned by the City of Markham, will build the 18.5-megawatt system to tap into the warm wastewater flowing through a sewer trunk line near one of its existing facilities.

“Anchored by our comprehensive Greenprint Plan, the City of Markham continues to be a municipal leader in sustainability with targeted steps to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050,” Markham Mayor Frank Scarpitti said in a release. “Constructing the world’s largest wastewater energy transfer (WET) project is a leading example of how we can reach this ambitious objective.”

It’s an opportunity that MDE has had its eye on for a quarter-century, but only began to consider seriously about five years ago, President and CEO Bruce Ander told The Energy Mix.

“We always knew there was constant temperature in this flow, and therefore an energy opportunity,” he said. But “you need a system to deliver it to. You could do a small project on a building scale with a small wastewater sewer trunk going by. But for the scale we needed, the community energy system had to develop to the point where the energy could be fully utilized.”

The utility’s Markham Downtown facility is built to serve 240 buildings totalling about 15 million square feet, “so that gives us the scale to use the energy flowing by,” he said. “That’s what we needed to have happen. We needed a place to put the energy.”

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