Yellowknife banks on a controversial climate solution
In the Northwest Territories, where temperatures can drop to -30 C during winter, government is always looking for sustainable ways to heat buildings. Photo by Emily Hon / Unsplash
By Chloe Rose Stuart-Ulin
On the evening of Feb. 6, 2018, Mike Auge, then manager of sustainability and solid waste for the City of Yellowknife, walked onto the conference room stage at the Westin Hotel in Ottawa.
He was there to collect an award from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM), honouring the city’s latest environmental innovation: a biomass boiler that would burn sustainably sourced wood pellets instead of oil to heat five separate municipal buildings.
Efficient heating systems are something of a holy grail in the Northwest Territories, where winter temperatures can drop to -30 C. Space heating accounts for over a third of all emissions in the territories, split down the middle between public and privately owned buildings. The Northwest Territories aims to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030. To get there will require focusing on cleaner methods of electrical generation, space heating, transportation and more efficient industrial processes.
Not surprisingly, sustainable options are a perennial topic. In 2010, the territorial government officially adopted biomass as its favoured energy-generation alternative.
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