Black Diamond may be small, but its energy efficient initiatives are huge - something the public will learn more about this weekend.
The Town is opening the doors of its Oilfields Regional Arena and Scott Seaman Sports Rink to showcase its energy savings initiatives on Oct. 3 from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.
This is the second year the Town is participating in Decentralised Energy Canada’s Green Energy Doors Open, which began in Ontario six years ago by Ontario Sustainability Energy Association.
About 15 people attended last year’s Black Diamond tour, led by Les Quinton, the Town parks and recreation manager.
“This year we will still give them a tour of the facility and go into details of what was done, why it was done, how it was done and how it is doing,” Quinton said. “If we can educate them a little bit then maybe they’ll get involved in taking some time to actually start doing things that are sustainable in their household or community. You have to try to lead by example.”
Over more than a decade the Town has installed efficiency furnaces and water heaters, programmable thermostats, motion sensors for lights, showers and faucets, a timer for exterior lights, low flow toilets, a 16.65 kilowatts solar system and a web-based energy management system, among other projects.
This past year auto-flush urinals and hand dryers were installed, more lights were converted to energy-efficient LED and a roof was built on the outdoor arena to prevent sun exposure and reduce refrigeration runtime, said Quinton.
Green Energy Doors Open invites users, producers and advocates of Decentralised Energy – a non-profit organization that works to accelerate the decentralized energy industry through programs and initiatives – to showcase sustainable energy projects to the public.
Black Diamond is one of six communities and more than 17 showcases across Alberta on Saturday.
“We are concerned about our environment and we believe in conserving energy,” Quinton said. “The more projects we do, if we showcase them a bit it helps people understand that we are working on it they might work on them as well.”
In addition to showing what changes have been made, Quinton will share how they affected energy and water consumption.
For instance, the Town’s initiatives reduced power costs significantly over the last two years, saving taxpayers $7,163, said Quinton.
Water consumption also experienced a significant drop, he said.
“For the indoor rink since 2003, the last year before we started water savings, until the end of 2014 we reduced water consumption by more than three million gallons of water,” he said, adding it resulted in a cost savings of $17,148.
Anouk Kendall, president of Decentralised Energy Canada, said the Green Energy Doors Open initiative in Alberta showcased 14 events last year, and she hopes that number will increase each year.
“It’s kind of a new concept for Alberta because there is a lot of change happening in Alberta’s energy sector right now,” she said. “We will boldly go forward and see if we can remove some of the negative perceptions on green energy in Alberta.”
Kendall said Alberta has the largest capacity of combined heat and power in Canada, is the North American leader in the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified building space and had 75 solar systems installed in public facilities this year.
“These are huge bragging rights,” she said. “It’s an opportunity for us to change the negative reputation that we’ve got in energy and to really start bragging about the changes we are making.”
While there’s a lot of publicity surrounding the impact of the oil sands, mining economy and resources economy, Alberta has always been a leader and innovator when it comes to energy, said Kendall.
“The fact we are leaders in combined heat and power shows we are thinking of efficiency and reducing emissions from the oil and gas sector, like Les Quinton’s projects in Black Diamond, integrating solar panels into the roof of buildings that are south facing,” she said. “It takes a long time for industry to catch up with these changes so our organization of decentralized energy in Canada raises awareness.”
For more details go to greenenergydoorsopen.ca
