Celebrating Earth Day with a New Combined Heat and Power Plant at Lakeridge Health

April 22, 2016 – Durham Region – A new 1.6MW combined heat and power (CHP) plant at Lakeridge Health Oshawa will power 42% of Lakeridge Health Oshawa’s electrical needs.

The CHP plant is fueled by natural gas for a cleaner, more efficient production of electricity. Heat from the process also heats the hospital.

“Today is an important day — for our patients and for the environment,” said Tom McHugh, Lakeridge Health Interim President and CEO. “The power we generate will take the equivalent of almost 1,200 homes off the grid and the money saved will be put back into direct patient care.”

“Lakeridge Health has shown real leadership with this initiative” said Atul Mahajan, President and CEO of Oshawa PUC Networks. “We hope other customers will follow this example, and we are ready to help with incentive and connection assistance when they do”. OPUCN played an important role in facilitating Lakeridge’s project, given their experience with CHP plants.

At the launch on Friday April 22, which is also Earth Day, Lakeridge Health was presented with a cheque for $1.78 million by the IESO. The cheque is an incentive from the “Save on Energy Process and Systems” program.  Lakeridge Health is the first hospital recipient of this program.

“So often we talk about the money we are saving.  But really, it’s not a savings – it’s an investment,” McHugh said. “Seeing it on that big cheque really drives home the money that we are able to put back into caring for our community.”

In 2010 Lakeridge Health partnered with Ecosystem Energy Services on an ambitious energy retrofit project to reduce energy costs by 22% and lower greenhouse gas emissions by more than 2,000 metric tons. Ecosystem guarantees the $1.3 million annual energy savings and employed an integrated energy performance contracting (IEPC) approach throughout the project.

“Ecosystem congratulates Lakeridge Health on the completion of this energy retrofit project. Stakeholder alignment and close collaboration were critical to the project’s success, and this was achieved with our engineers’ constant on-site presence and Lakeridge Health’s commitment to innovate and be a leader in energy efficiency.” said Guillaume Lavallée, Ecosystem’s project director.

Ecosystem also collaborated with Lakeridge Health’s Green Team to organize staff engagement activities that included a tour of the CHP plant and green give-aways on Earth Day.

Lakeridge Health’s efforts were awarded with the 2013 Green Hospital of the Year by the Ontario Hospital Association, the 2014 Environmental Achievement Award from the Durham Environmental Advisory Committee (DEAC) and honoured by many professional organizations.

More about Lakeridge Health project.