Green light for green heat

Rob Learn

February 4, 2010

NIPISSING – The South Shore Education Centre in Nipissing Village is one of four pilot projects in the province to receive special funding for a biomass boiler heating system.

Announced Wednesday, the pilot project will create a supplemental heating system to the junior kindergarten to Grade 8 school that is currently heated with a propane-fired in-floor water system.

Geoff Todd, manager of plants for the Near North District School Board, says the project will use wood pellets to fire a biomass boiler made by Viessman Manufacturing based out of Waterloo.

“The expectation is that the building will be ready by fall for the supplemental heating of the South Shore Education Centre,” said Todd.

Todd says South Shore was selected last spring by the board for an application to the pilot project. Factors for the board’s decision included the high cost of heating with propane, that the residents surrounding South Shore school are generally familiar with wood burning and that it isn’t surrounded by residential buildings.

“We didn’t want to put it in a school where there is a large residential area where if there is smoke or other emissions it would bother the neighbourhood,” said Todd.

He says that potential savings from the supplemental system have not yet been calculated, though he does expect some. The bigger motivation, Todd says, is that the boiler will reduce the school’s carbon footprint.

“The initial selling factor is the ‘green’ slant on this. It is considered carbon neutral. The carbon we put back in the air will be absorbed by the trees. . . and trees are a renewable resource,” said Todd.

That’s what the government is looking for, said Nipissing MPP Monique Smith.

“I think it is important that as the government we are leading the way in using and investing in green technology,” said Smith. “. . . It’s great to see a pilot project go ahead at one of our local schools.”

The education centre is one of 150 schools in 40 different school boards to receive a biomass boiler with funding through the Ministry of Education’s Green Schools Pilot Initiative that is investing $20 million in projects that are to be up and running by next school year.