Evidence of meeting #161 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was steam.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:20 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Perfect.
I'm going to interrupt, because I have only a minute left.
I think you mentioned that BOMA is doing some work with federal government buildings right now. Did I hear that right?
4:20 p.m.
Manager, Environmental Standards, Building Owners and Managers Association of Canada
Yes, it's the RP-1 portfolio, if that rings a bell.
4:20 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
No. What is the work that you're doing with them? Are you just doing energy audits, or are these buildings that are—
4:20 p.m.
Manager, Environmental Standards, Building Owners and Managers Association of Canada
They're going through the BOMA BEST program. They're getting the building certified with BOMA BEST, and they're doing the entire assessment through the 10 different categories—energy audit, water audit, waste audit, the whole thing—to see what level they can achieve.
4:20 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Are any provincial government buildings doing the same, or is it just the federal government that you're aware of?
4:20 p.m.
Manager, Environmental Standards, Building Owners and Managers Association of Canada
There are definitely some provincial government buildings. The Quebec provincial government and Saskatchewan definitely have buildings in, for sure.
4:20 p.m.
Conservative
4:20 p.m.
NDP
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
Thank you.
I want to start by following up on some of the comments we heard today about the energy services acquisition program. I was wondering if you guys have a sense of what the total project cost is, or how much government investment is at stake in that project.
4:20 p.m.
Alternate Regional Executive Vice-President, National Capital Region, Public Service Alliance of Canada
We haven't received the business plan yet, so we don't know. We're still waiting for it.
4:20 p.m.
NDP
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
You're still waiting to hear what the money is. I thought I heard somewhere that it was in the neighbourhood of $1 billion, but you haven't heard anything in terms of a ballpark even.
4:20 p.m.
First Vice-president, Local 20023, National Capital Region, Public Service Alliance of Canada
It was floating around in a meeting that it was going to be about $1.6 billion.
4:20 p.m.
NDP
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
Okay. I know you highlighted some of the potential risks. You talked about buildings freezing and stuff like that. I'm just wondering if you could explain how that happens in moving from steam to low-temperature hot water. Where is the potential for those risks?
4:20 p.m.
First Vice-president, Local 20023, National Capital Region, Public Service Alliance of Canada
Initially, when they were looking into this, they had visited Amsterdam and a plant in France, which run on low-temperature hot water. Low-temperature hot water has to be below the boiling point—so, below 212°F or 100°C. That works there, because their climate is relatively stable at an average temperature of over 8°C or so, but here it wouldn't really work that well.
I'll use one hot water system as an example. Confederation Heights is running at 375°F right now. It's a high-temperature installation. We know that global warming is happening. I don't know if anyone is a non-believer, but I'm a believer, with all the weather events we're experiencing, especially the tornado that just ripped through and took out our substation at Merivale.
When you produce steam, you need only a small electrical pump to pump water into the boiler. The natural gas does the work: It pressurizes the boiler, and the steam flows from a high pressure to a low pressure. There are no pumps required. When we lost that substation, we were able to keep the steam plant going with a relatively small diesel generator, and we could do it infinitely, as long as we had diesel.
If you go to a hot-water system to try to supply the whole downtown core—and they're even talking about supplying Tunney's Pasture, Portage, and Terrasses de la Chaudière—you're going to need a system that would be huge, electrically. You would need pumps.
Right now, our chill system has over one million gallons in it. If they were to implement this heating system, it would have at least two million gallons of treated molybdate hot water. There will be chemicals in this hot-water system.
Whenever you do a plant shutdown and you're actually physically going to shut down the system and work on it, weld on it or cut on it, you have to drain it. You could literally have hundreds of thousands of gallons that will have to be drained from that system, and there's nowhere to put it. It has to go in the river, and that molybdate is going in there.
Steam is self-draining, and you don't need pumps to pump it. It goes from one area to another. It is designed for our climate.
Initially, when they said low-temperature, we said it couldn't be done. I heard last week that they've increased the temperature to 150°C. We're getting closer to where it may happen and could work, but it still doesn't stop some of the major issues with hot water when you're right beside a river system. The fish are going to drink it; we're going to drink it, and that's just not a great idea.
4:25 p.m.
NDP
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
One of the other things we heard in our brief for this meeting was, I think, that the projection for energy savings initially is about 63% in terms of emissions. I know you mentioned in your presentation some ideas about how to improve efficiency with the existing steam system. We've also heard that one of the things that this number may not include—which is why I guess it would be helpful to see the document that this is based on—is that some of the buildings use the steam system for humidity control, and that can be quite important in certain buildings. They would have to install local boilers, and those local boilers would offset some of the emissions savings. I'm wondering if you could speak to that issue.
4:25 p.m.
First Vice-president, Local 20023, National Capital Region, Public Service Alliance of Canada
Yes. The National Gallery of Canada uses our steam directly to humidify their areas, to keep their artwork in a controlled environment. They would be required to put new steam boilers in, smaller steam boilers, so you'd have more natural gas lines running in these buildings—there's no question about that.
4:25 p.m.
NDP
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
If the system goes down and you need to effect a repair on the system, what's the difference? I know we talked about where the water might have to go, but what's the difference in terms of the amount of time that it would take to effect a repair if you had to drain a water system as opposed to a steam system?
4:25 p.m.
First Vice-president, Local 20023, National Capital Region, Public Service Alliance of Canada
With a steam line, when you shut that valve, you could have it down in maybe half an hour, and it would be cool enough for welders to work on it within two to three hours. With a hot-water system that size, depending on where the valving is, it could take 24 hours to drain a small section of pipe, because you can only drain it so fast. We're talking about pipes that are almost as tall as this room—they're huge—and they're not in that tunnel yet. They have to build the tunnels for these pipes. These tunnels were never designed for a system with such a low enthalpy of temperature in there. If they're going to low-temperature hot water, they're going to have to rip a lot of concrete down to try to get them to fit in there—that's for sure.
4:25 p.m.
NDP
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
In a month like the one we've been having here, would you need a backup heat system locally in buildings in order to avoid freezing while the repairs are effected? There's time on the other side in terms of entering the water back into the system and then re-pressurizing the system as well.
4:25 p.m.
First Vice-president, Local 20023, National Capital Region, Public Service Alliance of Canada
Exactly. We have shutdowns annually, sometimes semi-annually. We try to organize them in the off-peak period, not in February, of course.
Incidents happen, like the one in 2009. We were lucky it happened in November, and the lowest temperature we saw was -7°C. If that incident in 2009 had happened in February of this year, it would have been very serious. There would have been an extreme amount of damage to the infrastructure downtown, and to the buildings. There is no question about it.
There was no backup. The backup back then was Printing Bureau, and they had three little boilers. We were just lucky.
4:25 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Tom Lukiwski
Thank you very much.
Mr. Peterson, you have seven minutes, please.
February 4th, 2019 / 4:25 p.m.
Liberal
Kyle Peterson Liberal Newmarket—Aurora, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, everyone, for being with us today.
I'm just going to pick up with Mr. Wayland. You alluded in numerous remarks to the importance technology is going to have in all of this. I know you didn't necessarily get the opportunity to expand on those, so I'm going to give you the opportunity now.
I would just like you to elaborate on what aspects of technology we can harness, and how we can harness technology to achieve some of these goals.
4:30 p.m.
Executive Assistant to the International Vice-President and Canadian Director of Government Relations, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
I was getting into the building automation system, or BAS. The BAS controls are, essentially, your lighting, security, fire alarms, heating and cooling. That would be the brains of the operation, and it can control, as I said, even the blinds or thermostats in particular rooms.
That type of system is installed mostly in buildings that were built after 2000. Anything before that is hit-and-miss. Building automation systems vary in terms of how much you want them to look after. Mr. McCauley said earlier that they came in and did the work, but we don't know how good the improvements are. With the building automation system, you can go in afterwards and say, “With the time change...” or “This winter is really warm or really cold,” and you can adjust those variables as you move along. If we're not saving as much energy as we thought, we'll try to tweak the system.
That gives you the spreadsheet of where you can find those efficiencies. It is a tell-all. That is the way to go, by essentially making it a smart building.
4:30 p.m.
Liberal
Kyle Peterson Liberal Newmarket—Aurora, ON
Thank you, Mr. Wayland.
Following up on that point, to BOMA, PSPC has the smart buildings technology. You're probably familiar with that. Do you think all federal buildings should be using this technology? Is the cost-benefit there to make it worthwhile?
4:30 p.m.
Manager, Environmental Standards, Building Owners and Managers Association of Canada
Certainly, a building that can communicate with its different components and understand what's working when, and why it needs to be working at that particular time.... This is a really good thing for buildings to have.
That being said, if it's going from zero to a hundred, it might not be worthwhile for every single type of building. The largest culprits are the buildings that have been neglected over time. They're not the prestige buildings. They consume a lot of energy, and no one has really paid attention to them. Those are the ones where the biggest value could be had for even the lowest cost.
I might recommend a selective approach where you're choosing which ones are already high performers. Those ones will definitely see improvements with these BAS systems—these smart building technologies. Then, with the ones that have not had that kind of attention, maybe start off just by doing an audit and starting to put in place some basic retrofits for those buildings.