FUEL-SWITCHING FORECAST

BY BARBARA CARSS

Climate, cost and capacity pose fuel-switching challenges for facility owners looking to curb greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in line with Canada’s target for a 40 to 45 per cent reduction below 2005 levels by 2030. Industry panellists contemplating the electrification of mechanical systems during a recent Canada Green Building Council (CAGBC) conference in Toronto acknowledged that the leap to net zero comes with varying degrees of difficulty from region to region across the country.

For example, British Columbia’s lower mainland enjoys the twin advantages of a clean electricity grid and milder winter temperatures that generally don’t compromise the effectiveness of airsource heat pumps. Elsewhere, the arrival of new technologies and ongoing replacement of fossil-fuel-fired power generation with renewable sources are expected to ease the transition to low-carbon heating and domestic hot water systems, but that’s occurring on a patchwork of timelines.

A carbon price on pace to reach $170 per tonne by 2030 and the potential for other regulatory and investmentrelated imperatives are now reshaping conventional cost-benefit analyses. Yet, even as the commercial real estate industry is urged to readjust priorities from incremental improvements with quick paybacks to big-ticket, deep retrofits, energy efficiency continues to be a preferred gateway to decarbonization for many companies pursuing emissions reduction targets.

“One of the goals along with heating electrification is to reduce the amount of heat we need. It seems like now we’re talking about carbon, carbon, carbon, carbon, but energy efficiency is still very much the first thing that we focus on,” affirmed Ariel Feldman, director of sustainability with Choice Properties. “You still need to take all those steps first because, from the owner’s perspective, electrification is not necessarily going to pay back. You might spend more money up front and you might spend more money on the operations side. That’s not a very good business case to start from.”

That said, he maintains business cases should no longer be anchored in the supposition that a boiler has a 30year life cycle. Speaking at the REMI Show in June, Jeff Ranson, director of energy, environment and advocacy with the Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) of Greater Toronto, hammered home the same message.

“If you’re comparing the cost of zero carbon with your current operating costs, that’s a false equivalency because your current building operations may not be possible in the future. Business as usual may not exist, and probably won’t exist,” Ranson submitted. “We’re not typically factoring in changes to the asset value whether or not your building is aligned with carbon targets. We’re not factoring carbon pricing. We’re not factoring in policy risk.”

“The sticks are coming,” Steve Kemp, a principal with RDH Building Science, warned CAGBC conference attendees.

INCENTIVES AND OBSTACLES FOR ELECTRIC HEAT PUMPS

In British Columbia, there’s now one such stick intertwined with a carrot. Since the release of the provincial budget on February 23, 2022, the provincial sales tax (PST) on gas-fired heating and cooling systems has jumped from 7 per cent to 12 per cent, while heat pumps are now exempt from PST.

“To qualify, it must be a heat pump for air-conditioning and heating, where your heat pump is your primary heating and cooling system,” said Pushpinder Rana, senior director, commercial products and industry relations, with Mitsubishi Canada’s HVAC division. “Those are huge trigger points, and we are seeing similar movements across Quebec.”

Kemp outlined some of the obstacles to adoption. Notably, some air-source heat pumps employing variable refrigerant flow (VRF) technology function well down to temperatures of minus 30⁰ Celsius, but, predominantly, hydronic systems “go kaput” at about minus 15⁰ C, necessitating backup boilers in areas where the temperature falls below that threshold. Because heat pumps circulate lower-temperature water — at about 49⁰ C versus 82⁰ C with boiler systems — a switchover will likely also entail replacement of space heating equipment.

“Whether it’s a fan coil, baseboard convector or radiant panels, at these lower temperatures, you need a bigger physical thing to deliver the same amount of heat to that space,” Kemp advised. “We may be gutting every baseboard convector, every fan coil in the building.”

Retrofitters are installing larger convectors and fan coils, multiple-row fan coils or fan-assisted baseboard convectors. However, reinforcing Feldman’s argument for prioritizing energy efficiency, Kemp also cited an example of a major retrofit where his firm derived sufficient savings from building envelope improvements to cancel out such required investments.

“There, we basically cut the heating demand by 75 per cent and theoretically could have kept the same mechanical system,” he noted. “Sometimes you can get lucky.”

In the future, hybrid hydronic-VRF heat pump systems are expected to improve cold-weather performance and mitigate uncertainty around pending phase-downs of some hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) refrigerants. Rana sketched out a range of existing and emerging VRF heat pump and heat recovery products he predicts will increasingly capture market share, including hyper-heating technology for cold-temperature performance and a water-source format.

“There is a huge gap between what a heat pump or heat recovery solution provider can offer to the market and the understanding and the knowledge the market has,” he asserted. “We have training for consulting engineers. We have training for contractors. The objective is to educate the market.”

Alternatively, geo-thermal systems promise consistent output everywhere the required wells can be accommodated.

“If you’ve got space on your site for geothermal, you can do it across the country and we’re seeing really good paybacks even on a 15-year assessment,” reported Cara Sloat, senior engineer with the mechanical and electrical engineering firm, Hammerschlag and Joffe. “It’s worth looking at that technology even if you’ve previously been worried that you can’t afford it. Some of the big banks are financing that now also, so that can take it off your project’s books and get it somewhere where it’s easier to deal with.”

MAPPING OUT STRATEGIES TO 2030 AND 2050

She suggests the timing is right to convert to a heat pump in any building with a cooling system approaching the end of its life cycle, but also highlighted potential for capital planners to stretch the expenditure over a longer period.

“There are a variety now of quite good heat-only heat pumps on the market so you can get something that is optimized for heating only that would do your domestic hot water plant and directly replace a boiler,” Sloat said. “So maybe you do half the plant now and you think about phasing. That is available.”

Meanwhile, a portfolio primarily consisting of open-air retail and industrial warehouse buildings has given Choice Properties more flexibility for a phased FEW LOW-CARBON TECHNOLOGIES MAKING MARKET INROADS

A newly released examination of deep retrofit logistics finds that few of the existing technologies projected to help dramatically curb greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have yet conquered their market categories. The study from the Canada Green Building Council and the Delphi Group assesses 27 strategic building products and systems for availability, affordability and degree of adoption within the industry, and concludes that only eight figure positively for all three of those considerations.

Electrical and mechanical equipment have made greater progress toward being the status quo, while more obstacles to market penetration are noted for building envelope technologies and renewable energy systems.

Market awareness, a steady supply chain and competitive pricing will be needed to encourage the rollout of low-carbon technologies on the scale required to achieve emissions reduction goals. The study calls for a priority focus on six key technologies identified as “having greater relevance on the future of building improvements”. They include heat pumps, wall recladding systems, building automation systems, heat and energy recovery systems, building integrated photovoltaics and energy storage.

To read the full article, Deep retrofit logistics trip up on key products, please visit the REMI Network.

approach to its 2050 net zero target. Feldman projects rooftop HVAC units will need to be replaced at least twice in that period and, for now, that means dual-fuel gas and electric systems in some cases. It’s an approach he aims to minimize given the extra costs of two systems, but it’s a necessary contingency to address concerns about pass-through utility costs to tenants and capacity of the electrical grid. The latter can be a particular vulnerability when landlords have little ability to control tenants’ energy use.

“That was a limiting factor at one of our sites where we decided, even though we would have ideally liked to go all-electric, we’re doing dual-fuel for now while the grid is improved,” Feldman recounted. “We’re hoping with the next iteration in 15 years, we’ll go all-electric at that point. We have a little bit more leeway than you have on a multi-unit residential building or an office where you’re replacing a boiler that lasts 30 years.”

“We find that trying to retrofit heat pumps into existing buildings with limited space for additional transformers is very challenging,” Sloat concurred. “Doing a study on a high-rise building, we saw we were adding maybe 3 megawatts to back it up with an electric boiler, which is the same as a whole new building.”

Regardless of complications, with a the carbon price now at $50 per tonne, Kemp calculates electric heat pumps are already more cost-efficient than natural gas systems in British Columbia, Manitoba and Quebec. That pool should expand rapidly as the price takes its ordained trajectory to $170/tonne over the next eight years, and on up to possibly as high as $300/tonne by 2050.

By 2030, Kemp foresees Saskatchewan and Nunavut will be the only areas of Canada where fuel-switching may not be a money-saving proposition. Feldman concludes it’s best to get proactively ahead of that curve.

“British Columbia, Manitoba, Quebec, where the grids are clean and the electricity is relatively inexpensive, that’s where you want to focus at the start. Start with the ones that are a bit easier and then build your experience,” he urged. “As the technology improves and the supply chain improves and costs start to come down relative to the existing technologies, you will get to a point where it starts to look better and better in other provinces as well.”| CFM&D

BY GILES MORGAN

GETTING TECHIE WITH SCHOOL HYGIENE

Giving air purification and washroom health and safety a boost

Technology can play an important role in strengthening hygiene in schools with mechanisms like filtration to help capture bacteria and other particles to reduce the spread of germs

Air quality is a big driver of school hygiene, but while many buildings have built-in ventilation systems, it can be difficult to know how effective these systems are at removing pollution from the air. Pollutants can include particles ranging in size and gases such as volatile organic compounds (VOCs) or formaldehyde. Increasing ventilation by opening windows may cause poor outdoor air to come inside if the area is polluted, and presents temperature challenges which can impact comfort, particularly during the cold winter months and humid summer days.

In a global washroom and air quality survey conducted for Dyson in July 2021, 83 per cent of 15,100 people across 20 countries believe air purification is important in indoor working environments (1). Among the Canadian respondents, the top three benefits include being less likely to transmit or contract illness from microbes in the air, reducing the intake of harmful particles for longterm health, and supporting a fresher feeling environment.

If schools are thinking about adding portable purifiers to classrooms and common areas to aid in better indoor air quality, they should consider purifiers that are scientifically tested to capture particles as small as allergens and viruses, and include:

High-quality filtration and powerful projection to complement existing HVAC systems and provide cleaner, purified air throughout public spaces such as schools; A fully sealed HEPA 13 standard filtration2 — not only ensuring that no air bypasses the filter but blocking any potential leak points through which dirty air might enter the airflow. Filter systems should capture 99.97 per cent of particles as small as 0.3 microns including allergens, pollutants, bacteria, pollen, mould spores and gases; Strong air circulation to ensure that purified air reaches every corner of the room; Quiet operation to reduce unwanted disruption in educational spaces.

Shared washrooms also have a significant impact on hygiene in schools. The survey found that 65 per cent of respondents were more concerned about visiting public washrooms than they were the previous year, indicating empty paper towel dispensers among their top five frustrations along with a lack of toilet paper, unclean toilets, no soap, and blocked toilets. The survey also found that 24 per cent of Canadians were worried about drying their hands with dirty air from dryers. This is another area where HEPA filters could be beneficial—purifying the air used to dry hands

Canadians said that if a washroom did not have any working hand dryers or paper towels, 32 per cent would let their hands dry naturally while 19 per cent would wipe them on their clothes. Both options present risks of undoing the work of cleaning hands in the first place. A landmark 1997 study found that damp hands can transfer up to 1,000 times more bacteria than dry hands. With the right technology and a regular cleaning schedule, education facilities can alleviate many of these concerns, ensuring washrooms are more hygienic and ready for visitors.

Armed with the right information and data, schools can make informed choices about how to keep their students and staff safe, while prioritizing hygiene and protecting those most vulnerable. | CFM&D

1. Global survey conducted for Dyson in July 2021 across 20 countries worldwide (UK, DE, ES, FR, IT, NL, US, CA, MX, CN, JP, MY, SG, AU, TW, HK, IN, TR, AE, BE) with 15,100 respondents in total (500 in Canada), aged 18 years-old or above. Individual percentages vary per country. GREEN SEAL BANS ALL PFAS IN CLEANING PRODUCTS

Green Seal, an industry-leading environmental standard development and certification organization, now prohibits all per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in certified cleaning and personal care products.

PFAS are a large group of synthetically produced chemicals that have a history of use dating back to the 1940s. The category includes over 12,000 chemicals that are often found in food packaging, coatings, personal care and cosmetics, paints, textiles, cookware, and even some cleaning products. PFAS have carbon-fluorine bonds that make them persistent in the environment and are also associated with numerous adverse health effects, including the body’s ability to develop beneficial antibodies in response to vaccines.

Green Seal says it is taking a product-category approach to developing PFAS restrictions as part of a multi-year phased initiative to ensure that certified products in all categories have leadership restrictions.

Giles Morgan is a senior design engineer with Dyson. He joined the organization from university and within his 4.5 years has been part of the new product development engineering team.

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