Vancouver’s River District to get heat from district energy project

Vancouver’s River District has signed on as the first customers of Metro Vancouver’s proposed waste-to-energy facility.

River District Energy plans to purchase up to 10 megawatts of heat from the facility starting in 2025.

Once the waste-to-energy facility is fully built out, it will provide heat and hot water for 18,000 residents and more than 500,000 square feet of office and commercial space. This will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 90 per cent, according to a press release.

The facility, which is in Burnaby, B.C., handles about 25 per cent of the area’s waste and can produce up to 22 megawatts of electricity, which goes into the BC Hydro grid.

Project design on the facility will begin in early 2022. The first phase of construction will see an energy centre built next to the waste-to-energy facility, along with a pipe system to deliver hot water to River District. A Community Energy Centre, which will receive heat from the waste-to-energy facility and distribute it to the River District community, will be built in 2023.

This first phase of the district energy project will cost approximately $55 million.