By Amy Woolvett
THE COAST GUARD
NovaNewsNow.com
The Municipality of Shelburne hopes to attract tenants into the Shelburne Industrial Park by developing it as an ecologically friendly site complete with wind turbines and an ocean source heating system.
The first phase of the project to develop the industrial park as an Eco park with renewable energy infrastructure is provide the tenants with power and energy options that are sustainable and have low environmental impact.
“There are a lot of industrial parks in the province,” said Chief Administrator Kirk Cox for the municipality. “We are trying to find a niche or value, something innovative that we can do to stand out.”
He explained that tenants would benefit if the park were to provide alternative sustainable energy to current and future park tenants.
The project would involve installing two complementary renewable energy technologies: ocean source heat pumps and eight to 10 small (100 kW) wind turbines.
“First for the financial value to businesses but also to meet their sustainable mandate to reduce their carbon footprint,” said Cox.
Nova Scotia Power has partnered with the municipality as they launch a study on the feasibility of the development.
Some of the larger current tenants of the park include Roseway Hospital, Nova Scotia Community College and Ven Rez Products Limited and discussions held between the tenants and the municipality have been positive.
According to project plans the ocean source heat pumps would remove heat from seawater and transfer it to a 3km closed loop-piping system that would then deliver heat to users in the industrial park cluster through heat exchangers.
The heat source generated would provide at least 80 per cent of the heat required by clients using oil as their primary heat.
It is planed that the wind farm would offset the energy usage of the heat pumps as well as offsetting around 90 per cent of the electrical energy used by clients.
The projected cost for the development of the ocean source heating system and wind turbines is $8.5-million.
“It is going to cost a lot of money to do it but we are hoping to get a lot of people to help across all levels of government,” said Cox.
The project planning estimates that 75 to 80 per cent of the total capital costs could be provide through outside sources.
In order to draw in clients the tenants would have to save at least 10 per cent in their annual energy costs, the municipality predicts.
“Any business that has a high energy usage could save millions,” explained Cox.
