An imposing residential and commercial development project is taking shape in Gatineau and Ottawa, on the banks of the Ottawa River. This carbon-neutral district, named Zibi, will be heated by heat emissions from a pulp and paper factory. Field visit.
A chimney crackles in the blue sky. Not far away, millions of liters of hot water rest in a settling basin to let the fibers that soil the liquid settle. Not so long ago, wastewater from Kruger’s pulp and paper mill in Gatineau was returned to the river after treatment — and its heat wasted.
But since last February, this precious thermal energy is no longer wasted. Pipes soak up the heat from the basin and convey it a kilometer further, in the Zibi district, a real estate development which should house 5,000 residents and accommodate 6,000 workers within a decade.
“Our pipes kiss the water from the Kruger plant in the winter for heat, and they kiss the water from the river in the summer for cold,” says Jeff Westeinde, president of the developer group, at the occasion of the official inauguration on Tuesday of the Zibi “district energy system”.
This heating and air conditioning system works without generating any emissions and consuming very little electricity. New neighborhoods of this type, which include tall apartment buildings, still often rely on natural gas for heating, especially in Ontario.
On the construction site, cranes are activated. The 14 hectares of the project, which extends on either side of the Chaudière Falls, right in the center of the twin cities of the Ottawa River, have long been occupied by the forestry and paper company Domtar. They were bought out in 2013 by the promoters.
Zibi means “water” for the Anishinabés who frequented the area long before the paper mills. On Tuesday, Elder Peter Decontie of the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg First Nation held a ceremony and prayer at the inauguration of the heat recovery system. He sprayed deputies, a mayor and business people involved in the project with smoke.
Avoid Ontario Electricity
The first tenants moved into an apartment tower in the project last December. On the lower floors of the building, a panoply of colored pipes intertwine. It is in this mechanical room that looks like water slides that the heat from Kruger is extracted.
The Zibi district energy system is a “special bug” because of its overlapping of Quebec and Ontario, explains Philippe Gauthier, mechanical engineer at Eequinox, the firm responsible for the thermal component of the project. To achieve carbon neutrality, the promoters wanted to use Quebec electricity, which is cleaner, to run the accessories needed for the heating loop.
“We don’t want to use Ontario’s electricity because their network includes nuclear energy and also a lot of natural gas,” says Mr. Westeinde bluntly beyond the noise of the compressors. However, the energy boards do not allow electricity to pass from one province to another. On the other hand, they don’t care about hot water currents…
Two “giant heat pumps” running on Quebec electricity thus make it possible to “concentrate” the thermal energy of the water coming from Kruger: it goes from 23°C to 44°C. This water is then hot enough to supply an air heating system on the Ontario side.
A reproducible model
Hydro-Québec will finance up to $4.8 million for the project buildings on the north shore of the Ottawa River. Nancy Guénette, director of service and sales to business customers at Hydro-Québec, explains that this will be part of the energy efficiency objectives of the government corporation.
“What is extraordinary with this project, she says, is that we are talking about a latent energy potential. It’s not energy that we have to produce, transport, distribute: it’s already there. It allows us to save precious kilowatt hours to decarbonize other sectors. »
According to its promoters, Zibi is the first thermal waste recovery project to see the light of day in a “judiciously planned” community (master-planned community) in North America. Recovery systems supplying greenhouses or industrial parks are more common.
The equipment needed for Zibi’s thermal system is expensive — according to Mr. Westeinde, installing natural gas boilers would have required four times less investment. However, in the long term, the recovery of waste heat should prove to be a profitable choice. The company is also working to replicate its model elsewhere in the country.
The district energy system [de Zibi] sets an important precedent for other Canadian municipalities, particularly those that maintain gas installations,” noted Greg Fergus, Liberal MP for Hull-Aylmer in the House of Commons, who was present at the inauguration.
For Kruger, the interest of this project lies in the reduction of its carbon footprint thanks to the creation of offset credits. Its Gatineau plant, which produces facial tissue, runs primarily on natural gas; it emitted more than 50,000 tonnes of CO2 in 2020.