2022 Fall Issue - 141

Enwave's catchment area in Toronto represents chilled water, steam, and hot water infrastructure. Enwave partnered with Riocan Real Estate Investment Trust
and Allied REIT to build and operate a thermal " battery " several stories tall underground. Cold lake water accumulates at night and is released during the day.
district heating creates an economy
of scale that drives efficiency, balances
electricity loads, and reduces
fuel costs.
Enwave has operated a water
heating service in Toronto for just
a few years, Jacobs says, but has
operated a hot water service in
Charlottetown on Prince Edward
Island for more than 25 years. This
legacy hydrocarbon-fueled system
is currently supplemented by
low-carbon sources, such as heat
pumps.
The Future of District
Energy
Many professionals in the district
energy field are interested in retrofitting
legacy energy systems for
district energy and see such retrofitting
as central to the future of
district energy.
In Philadelphia, for example, ULI
member Alan Razak, principal of
real estate firm AR Spruce, is organizing
an Advisory Services panel
to study use of the Philadelphia
Gas Works (PGW) right-of-way to
place ground-source heat pumps
underground near individual
homes. Retrofitting in this way can
benefit utilities as well as energy
consumers: the number of PGW gas
customers is steadily declining so
the company will have decreasing
ability to bear the cost of operating
its gas system but may be able to
recoup at least some of its costs
through placement of heat pumps.
A bonus of retrofitting legacy
energy systems for district energy is
not having to incur the full upfront
costs of a new district energy
system-including the environmental
costs of embedded carbon for
new construction.
As energy needs have grown and
availability of renewable energy has
become more widespread-both
of which emphatically apply in
Toronto-real estate developers
have rediscovered district energy in
its third-wave renewable form and
are using it in appropriate projects.
In addition, the long-distance
main electric power grid is strained
well beyond its intended capacity,
and by using a local grid off
the main grid, district energy can
reduce pressure on, and extend
the lifetime of, the main grid-and
without cost to the operators of
the main grid. In areas where the
main grid simply cannot absorb
any additional users, district energy
may be the only solution.
In saving energy simply by
localizing the place of its generation-conservation
by localization-district
energy goes far toward
enabling the real estate industry to
manage the energy transition. UL
CHUCK SCHILKE is a Washington, D.C.-based
real estate strategist, developer, financier, lawyer,
and real estate lecturer at Johns Hopkins University.
He performed all the real estate legal due diligence
for the Exxon-Mobil merger, rebuilt the Red Cross's
blood processing system nationwide, and created the
Georgetown University real estate master's program.
FALL 2022
URBAN LAND
141
IMAGE COURTESY OF ENWAVE

2022 Fall Issue

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of 2022 Fall Issue