Mary Teresa Bitti, Finan­cial Post

For John Crane, the path to energy con­ser­va­tion started in 1979, when he took an energy course at New York University.

“From then on, I was inter­ested in energy man­age­ment,” says the engi­neer and oper­a­tions man­ager at York­dale Shop­ping Cen­tre in Toronto. In fact, dur­ing the course of his career, he took it upon him­self to deter­mine the health of the build­ings he was over­see­ing by por­ing over hydro bills, trend­ing and ana­lyz­ing. He hasn’t stopped.

What’s more, he brought that metic­u­lous focus to York­dale when he joined the shop­ping cen­tre in 2001 after hav­ing com­pleted a build­ing audit of the two-million-square-foot com­mer­cial retail space and its 200 stores. Since then he has retro­fit­ted the build­ing with a focus on energy effi­ciency. His goal: to use less.

“We looked at all redun­dant equip­ment includ­ing ven­ti­la­tion and air con­di­tion­ing sys­tems that were energy inef­fi­cient and we replaced it with new equip­ment,” Mr. Crane says. “We went crazy on the light­ing retro­fits – this leads to the biggest savings.”

In fact, York­dale spent $300,000 on the light­ing retro­fit in 2007, which led to sav­ing 850,000 kilo­watt hours per year.

“We used Toronto Hydro’s Busi­ness Incen­tive Pro­gram to make the busi­ness case for that change. Now we have new energy effi­cient light­ing through­out the shop­ping centre.”

What’s more, under his direc­tion York­dale has installed a brand new build­ing automa­tion sys­tem allow­ing the build­ing to shift and even shed its elec­tric­ity load usage dur­ing peak times. Load shift­ing is just that: the prac­tice of shift­ing energy use away from peak demand times (week­day after­noons) to less energy inten­sive times, when elec­tric­ity is cheaper.

It rep­re­sents a win for elec­tric­ity con­sumers in the form of cost sav­ings and for the province, which can bet­ter man­age peak demand and reduce the need to import elec­tric­ity or build new gen­er­a­tion facilities.

“If you con­trol your energy use, three things will hap­pen,” Mr. Crane says. “You will cre­ate a won­der­ful envi­ron­ment for every­one – ten­ants, staff, cus­tomers – who comes to the build­ing. You are going to help the hydro grid by reduc­ing energy con­sump­tion. And you will save money. This is what will hap­pen if you have a good energy and envi­ron­men­tal program.”

And that is, in fact, exactly what hap­pened. In 2001, York­dale con­sumed 14 mil­lion kilo­watt hours of energy a year. At the end of 2008, that dropped down to nine mil­lion kilo­watt hours a year: a 40% reduc­tion in energy con­sump­tion. And through Toronto Hydro’s Con­ser­va­tion and Demand man­age­ment pro­gram, York­dale uses its back-up gen­er­a­tors when called upon by the util­ity dur­ing peak demand peri­ods, tak­ing the mall off the grid and thereby alle­vi­at­ing demand in Toronto by 1,300 kW. In return, the shop­ping cen­tre receives an annual incen­tive payment.

Mr. Crane’s efforts are exactly what Bill 100, the Elec­tric­ity Restruc­tur­ing Act intro­duced in 2004, and Bill 150, the Green Energy and Green Econ­omy Act, 2009, hope to encour­age. Bill 100 calls on all elec­tric­ity users to make a behav­ioural shift – one geared to con­ser­va­tion. The Green Energy and Green Econ­omy Act (Bill 150) puts energy con­ser­va­tion, demand man­age­ment and envi­ron­men­tal respon­si­bil­ity front and centre.

“The leg­is­la­tion is really about aware­ness and being sen­si­tive to what the envi­ron­ment is fac­ing,” says Kah Fae Chan, direc­tor of demand man­age­ment, Toronto Hydro-Electric System.

“The leg­is­la­tion itself has three com­po­nents: renew­able energy, con­ser­va­tion and putting some intel­li­gence into the dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem in order for the var­i­ous com­po­nents in the sys­tem to com­mu­ni­cate with each other, mak­ing the over­all sys­tem more effi­cient in order to meet demand and energy reduc­tion tar­gets deter­mined by the government.”

The goal is to reduce Ontario’s peak demand by 20% or 6,300 megawatts by 2025. This is the equiv­a­lent of tak­ing the city of Toronto off the power grid dur­ing peak load in a hot summer.

To that end, Toronto Hydro-Electric Sys­tem and the Ontario Power Author­ity intro­duced the Busi­ness Incen­tive Pro­gram in 2007 to encour­age com­mer­cial and indus­trial cus­tomers, which account for 70% of Ontario’s elec­tric­ity use, to conserve.

“Essen­tially, we are try­ing to reduce the load dur­ing peak time,” Mr. Chan says. “The pro­gram is geared to three seg­ments: indus­trial cus­tomers, com­mer­cial cus­tomers with build­ings up to 25,000 sq. ft. and multi-residential buildings.”

The incen­tives range from $150/kW to $350/kW. The pro­posed project should result in a min­i­mum of three kW of peak load reduc­tion or have a min­i­mum total incen­tive value of $450. As well, the project has to be per­ma­nent, reduce peak demand and involve cer­tain sav­ings. A good exam­ple is chang­ing out inef­fi­cient light­ing to more effi­cient lighting.

“Once that is done, we can be cer­tain that the elec­tric­ity demand will be reduced, as long as the lights are on,” Mr. Chan says.

“Replac­ing an old and inef­fi­cient rooftop air-conditioner unit with a high-efficiency unit is another good exam­ple, since on a hot day the air-conditioner would be run­ning and demand reduc­tion is cer­tain due to the effi­ciency improvement.

“Ulti­mately there has to be sig­nif­i­cant effort from cus­tomers. In turn, that effort results in cost sav­ings and a renewed com­mit­ment to the environment.”

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