Summer Rewind: Reimagining heating and cooling with district energy systems

Summer rewind: Scott Demark, President and CEO of Zibi Community Utility, joins thinkenergy to discuss how our relationship with energy is changing. With two decades of expertise in clean energy and sustainable development, Scott suggests reimagining traditional energy applications for heating and cooling. He shares how strategic energy distribution can transform urban environments, specifically how district energy systems optimize energy flow between buildings for a greener future. Listen in. Related links ● Scott Demark on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-demark-83640473/ ● Zibi Community Utility: https://zibi.ca/ ● Markham District Energy Inc: https://www.markhamdistrictenergy.com/ ● One Planet Living: https://www.bioregional.com/one-planet-living ● Trevor Freeman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-freeman-p-eng-cem-leed-ap-8b612114/ ● Hydro Ottawa: https://hydroottawa.com/en To subscribe using Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thinkenergy/id1465129405 To subscribe using Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7wFz7rdR8Gq3f2WOafjxpl To subscribe on Libsyn: http://thinkenergy.libsyn.com/ --- Subscribe so you don't miss a video: https://www.youtube.com/user/hydroottawalimited Follow along on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hydroottawa Stay in the know on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HydroOttawa Keep up with the posts on X: https://twitter.com/thinkenergypod ---- Transcript: Trevor Freeman 00:00 Hi everyone. Well, summer is here, and the think energy team is stepping back a bit to recharge and plan out some content for the next season. We hope all of you get some much needed downtime as well, but we aren't planning on leaving you hanging over the next few months, we will be re releasing some of our favorite episodes from the past year that we think really highlight innovation, sustainability and community. These episodes highlight the changing nature of how we use and manage energy, and the investments needed to expand, modernize and strengthen our grid in response to that. All of this driven by people and our changing needs and relationship to energy as we move forward into a cleaner, more electrified future, the energy transition, as we talk about many times on this show. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll be back with all new content in September. Until then, happy listening. Trevor Freeman 00:55 Welcome to think energy, a podcast that dives into the fast changing world of energy through conversations with industry leaders, innovators and people on the front lines of the energy transition. Join me, Trevor Freeman, as I explore the traditional, unconventional and up and coming facets of the energy industry. If you have any thoughts, feedback or ideas for topics we should cover, please reach out to us at think energy at hydro ottawa.com, Hi everyone. Welcome back one of the overarching aspects of the energy transition that we have talked about several times on this show is the need to change our relationship with energy, to rethink the standard way of doing things when it comes to heating and cooling and transportation, et cetera. This change is being driven by our need to decarbonize and by the ongoing evolution and improvement of technology, more things are becoming available to us as technology improves. On the decarbonization front, we know that electrification, which is switching from fossil fuel combustions to electricity for things like space and water heating, vehicles, et cetera, is one of the most effective strategies. But in order to switch out all the end uses to an electric option, so swapping out furnaces and boilers for heat pumps or electric boilers, switching all gas cars to EVs, et cetera, in order to do that in a way that is affordable and efficient and can be supported by our electricity grid. We need to think about multi strategy approaches, so we can't just continue to have this one way power grid where every home, every business, every warehouse or office tower satisfies all of its energy needs all the time directly from the grid with no adaptability. That isn't the best approach. It's not going to be affordable or efficient. We're not going to be able to do it fast enough. The multi strategy approach takes into account things like distributed energy resources, so solar and storage, et cetera, which we've talked about many times on this show, but it also includes approaches like district energy. So district energy is rethinking how energy flows between adjacent buildings, looking for opportunities to capture excess energy or heat from one source and use that to support another, and that is the focus of today's conversation to help us dive into this topic, I'm really happy to welcome Scott demark to the show. Scott has been a champion of sustainability, clean energy solutions and energy efficiency in the Ottawa ...