Report targets high price of power
About 80 per cent of local money spent on energy leaves Windsor
Roughly 80 per cent of the money spent on energy in Windsor leaves the community, which will cost up to $3.1 billion over 25 years if the trend doesn’t change, a detailed new report says.
The 97-page report entitled Windsor’s Community Energy Plan: A Powerful Plan for the Future, which goes to the city’s environment standing committee June 28, notes that Windsor spent $842 million on energy in 2014.
With a conservative estimate of energy costs increasing 120 to 280 per cent, by 2041 Windsorites will spend $1.8 billion to $3.1 billion if the city adopts a “do-nothing ” approach.
“It’s money that leaves the community so it’s not providing an economic benefit locally,” Karina Richters, the city’s supervisor of environmental sustainability and climate change, said Wednesday.
Most of the local money spent on energy goes to such things as electricity, gas and oil produced out of town.
“So we want to look at how much energy we use and how we can reduce that and save money.”
Windsor’s Community Energy Plan proposes a bold step: reducing Windsor’s energy use and greenhouse gas emissions 40 per cent by 2041.
The report also envisions a number of approaches: reducing energy usage and greenhouse gas emissions, increasing locally produced power to create more energy security, and providing as much local economic benefit as possible.
The whole idea is to be friendlier to the planet as well as Windsorites’ wallets.
Currently, Windsor residential energy use is about 142 gigajoules, compared to the Ontario average of 107.
“Why do we have such a higher energy use compared to the Ontario average?” asked Richters, who helped produce the report. “One of the reasons is we have a lot of very old homes. Half the houses were built before 1945. A lot of them are wartime homes that have not been upgraded.”
The city already has District Energy, a high-efficiency heating and cooling system in the basement of Caesars Windsor, that serves a number of downtown spots such as the 400 Building in City Hall Square, significantly reducing their energy use.
Besides improving energy-efficiency, can the city really produce more of its own power? Actually, yes.
The city has installed rooftop solar farms in three places: the aquatic complex, the WFCU Centre and Transit Windsor (though a recent windstorm left the latter temporarily out of commission).
As high as home energy use is for Windsor, however, houses are not the biggest issue. A lack of active transportation is an even bigger culprit — given that Windsorites spend 46 per cent of their energy costs getting to and from places.
“Everybody complains about electricity costs, but we spend far more in the community on transportation costs than we do on electricity,” Richters said.
In the end, Richters believes that the economic and environmental goals of Windsor’s Community Energy Plan — which should be available for public input after going to the city’s environment standing committee — jibe with a better quality of life for the community.
“About 80 per cent of the $842 million is not spent here,” Richters said. “It’s a huge cost and it was very surprising. If we can re-invest some of that money in our community we can make it more liveable and affordable.”