Ottawa’s Cool Plan to Use White Snow For Green Energy
Officials in Ottawa are considering a cool plan to use the ‘cold energy’ stored in snow as a source of renewable energy in public buildings across the city.
Under the plan, snow collected on the Ottawa streets during the cold winter months would be used to keep the city’s hospitals, universities and government buildings cool during the hot summer. Snow collected during the winter normally melts by early June, but, if the plan gets the green light, it will be insulated with wood chips, making it last until September. The icy melt-water could then be fed through pipes to keep buildings cool without the need for expensive, and energy hungry, air conditioners.
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A study commissioned to investigate the in’s and out’s of the scheme is due to report back early next year. Councillor Diane Deans, who first dreamt up the idea, is very enthusiastic, telling reporters, “I think our taxpayers would be a lot happier knowing that snow, instead of just piling up and melting and costing them money, was actually being reused.”
Image Credit - *Micky via flickr.com on a Creative Commons license
Interesting idea as long as it is properly studied. The three concerns off the top of my head are below:
LOGISTICS/ENGINEERING
Where does the snow get stored? How does it get to the buildings? Are they already set up to use cold water or do they need new cooling systems to make use of it?
ENVIRONMENTAL
Effectively this will be postponing some of the spring runoff to be spread out over the summer. How much snow are we talking about? What effect will it have on reducing spring runoff? What effect will that have on ecosystems downstream? Where does the water go in the summer and what effect will it have?
Conversely, how much power/pollution/GHGs will this save?
COST
Depending on the answers above, how much will this cost? How much for the upfront planning, engineering, and environmental studies? How much to implement? How much is saved from reduced A/C costs?
It seems like a good idea, but is no small task to plan and implement.
We must not as a nation forget the role the high cost of our dependence on foreign fuel played in the demise of our automakers. The exorbitant cost of gas the past year has done serious damage to our economy and society. We need to take lessons from our mistakes.WE also need to get out from under the grip our dependence on fore gin oil has on us. Why not take some of these billions and invest in America becoming energy independent. Driving an electric car would cost the equivalent of 60 cents a gallon. The electricity could be generated by solar or wind power. Green technology would create millions of badly needed new jobs. What America needs is a green revolution. It is time for us to move forward with alternative energy. I just read Jeff Wilson’s new book The Manhattan Project of 2009. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is concerned about the downward spiral of our economy and it’s effect on our society and would like to see our country become energy independent!
It’s funny, we’re re-learning the lessons that our ancestors a hundred years ago did out of necessity. I grew up in a hundred year old farmhouse in Saskatchewan. When my father was growing up they used three “technologies” that are now back in vogue under the green banner:
1) All rain off the roof is (to this day) captured in a cistern in the basement. This water is used for everything except drinking water.
2) The house was “off the grid” until the late 50’s so a 75 ft tall tower with windmill supplied 24 volt electricity stored in a bank of batteries in the basement. (Somehow this was economic back then but wind power on this scale is no longer economically feasible for many people — granted our usage of electricity is much higher now than it was then.)
3) Related to this story, the yard to this day has an “ice house”. This shed has a basement which every winter was filled with ice: either by cutting blocks of ice from a nearby dugout and/or by flooding it with water and letting it freeze in the winter. When the weather started to warm up in the spring the ice was covered with straw. This was used to keep milk and other perishables chilled throughout the hot summer months.
What’s old is new again.
Be sure to study it though. History, that is!
Yeroc,
I was thinking the same thing. My grandfather used to cut ice blocks and stack them in barns then pack them with hay for work in his younger days. I immediately thought of the renewal of this idea in the same manner that you did.
Crazy how things repeat themselves.
I bet a ground source heat pump could do a better job. Or even a passive solar building design. We must continue to move forward not back in time.