Corporate Knights
Summary
Markham, Ontario, in the 1990s was a city in need of a pivot: away from an era of increasing sprawl and toward denser neighbourhoods with better urban planning. The long-term pressures of climate change and the energy transition were already visible, and in 1999 Markham’s city councillors took the step of investing in a district energy system to heat and cool its downtown core. Instead of relying on individual boilers and cooling equipment in every building, the city backed a shared energy network designed to scale alongside new development.
Now, roughly 25 years later, insulated pipes buried beneath parts of Markham carry hot and chilled water between central energy plants and connected buildings across more than 14 million square feet of development. Markham’s investment paid off. The system has delivered a faster transition to cleaner energy while helping build amore resilient city by improving long-term energy reliability and flexibility as community needs evolve.
“The thing we’re able to do with[centralized plants] is adopt new technologies long before a building would,” says Peter Ronson, COO of Markham District Energy. “And so the buildings on a district energy system benefit from the transition to higher efficiency and lower carbon footprint.”
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