Quesnel City Council has given staff the green light to submit a grant application to assist in funding a Thermal Energy System feasibility study.
Kyle Aben is the city’s Carbon Review Coordinator.
“Currently funding is available through the Federation of Canadian Municipalities for up to 50 percent of the feasibility cost.  Our partner, West Fraser, is applying through IFIT (Investments in Forestry Industry Transformation program) for their portion. And then the city would be required to put up 10 percent or approximately 40 thousand dollars.”
The total cost of the study is just south of 400 thousand dollars.
An investigation into a city-owned system for the downtown core was initiated by the city and West Fraser back in January of last year.
It showed that it would not not require any increase in fiber or biomass burning by West Fraser and would focus on waste heat already available through production, and would also assist the City in meeting both its reduced emission targets by reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 20%, as well as reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 29% for the City’s corporate operations.
While it would initially focus on the downtown core, Councillor Mitch Vik wanted to know if it could be expanded to other ares…
“You’ve identified in the report some of the big ticket items in regards to who would benefit from the heat would be the arena, Dunrovin, other Northern Health facilities.  Is it possible that this project in the future could be scaled up to provide the heat resource to business in the area, or to other government buildings ?”
Aben then talked about that potential.
“We’re hoping that the core, being the city core, but we are really looking for the expandibility of it to other areas, or even the potential for anchor clients of new apartment buildings or whatever is developed on the QJS site, so we’re very much making expandability of the project a core feature of it.”
Mayor Bob Simpson noted that if the feasibility study shows that it is feasible and is worth investing in, that the current grant situation for capital investments of this nature seem to be pretty good right now.