Gas tax to recycle hot air at Oak Bay arena

A plan to capture hot air escaping from Oak Bay’s skating rink is expected to save the district money and cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 14 per cent.

The municipality has received a $668,000 federal grant for a system that will take warm air from the arena’s refrigeration plant and use it to heat other parts of the recreation centre.

“We’re taking heat that would otherwise be lost to the environment and getting it over to the tennis courts and the swimming pool and the lounge area,” Mayor Nils Jensen said Friday.

“It’s a lot of complex pieces, but we hope to be able to get it all done within about a year.”

The heat-transfer system is expected to save the rec centre about $34,000 a year in natural gas, cut its greenhouse gas emissions by more than 80 per cent and reduce the district’s total emissions by 14.2 per cent.

Oak Bay signed an agreement in 2007 to trim a third of its greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. Jensen said the arena project will help the district meet and exceed its target a year early.

“It’s something we’re very proud of,” he said. “Our staff have been working very diligently with a whole bunch of energy-saving projects and recreation centres are the biggest draws of energy.

“So this is a huge environmental step forward for Oak Bay.”

The project is one of 112 across B.C. slated to receive nearly $193 million from the federal gas tax fund. The fund is administered by the Union of B.C. Municipalities. Among the other projects: • The District of Saanich received $4 million to replace aging mechanical systems at Saanich Commonwealth Place and install boilers fuelled by biomass instead of natural gas. The project is expected to reduce the centre’s carbon footprint by 90 per cent. • The Cowichan Valley Regional District received $7.9 million to upgrade the Cobble Hill and Mill Bay sewer systems and provide a reliable power supply to the Ditidaht First Nation on Nitinat Lake. • Nanaimo got conditional approval for a $3.8-million grant toward a continuous waterfront walkway from Departure Bay to the Nanaimo River Estuary. The first two sections are scheduled to be finished in 2019.