Tantramar council’s Climate Change Advisory Committee (CCAC) is calling on municipal leaders to put the Tantramar Veteran’s Memorial Civic Centre on the path toward net zero.
An energy audit in 2024 showed massive costs for electricity at the Civic Centre, with 12 months of NB Power bills totalling more than $166,000, including HST. The audit suggested fixes that could save the municipality money and cut greenhouse gas emissions. CCAC chair Doug Bliss says he’d like to see Tantramar council take those recommendations one step further.
“We’ve recommended that the town be declarative and say… we want to make the building that has the most energy consumption in the municipality move towards a net zero situation,” says Bliss. “Which means, basically, doing all the energy conservation that you can do within the building, reducing your energy, and additionally seeing if you can produce your own electricity.”
The CCAC is one of the municipality’s few citizens advisory committees, with members appointed by council, and terms of reference that require regular reports and recommendations to council. The December 2024 energy audit, which includes audits of the Dorchester Veterans Community Centre and the Tantramar public works building, was a recommendation of the CCAC last year.
Rising power costs and possible fixes
The Civic Centre celebrated its 20th anniversary last year, and according to the December audit is more energy intensive than average for its building type.
And the municipality has the electricity bills to prove it. Bills collected for the audit show that in December 2023, the rink racked up an NB Power bill of just over $25,000 including HST. By August, with no ice surface to maintain, the bill dropped to a tenth of that amount, to just over $3500.
And those costs have been rising. The bills captured in the energy audit predate two rate increases by NB Power, which combined add up to a 16% increase in the Civic Centre’s ‘general service’ power rates since March 2024.
According to the December 2024 energy audit, there are three fixes that could save the municipality nearly $29,000 a year in expenses, and also spare the atmosphere from another 55 tonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions each year. Those are: lighting replacement, a working heat recovery system for the ice plant, and investment in a piece of equipment called a floodwater deaerator. The fixes come with an upfront cost of just over $240,000, which means the ‘payback period’ (the time over which the savings incurred covers the upfront cost) would be less than 9 years.
More information needed for net zero plan
The energy audit only explored efficiency options, and did not venture into the potential for the Civic Centre, or any other Tantramar-owned site, to start producing its own energy.
That’s why, says Bliss, there’s still some missing pieces when it comes to the Civic Centre’s path to near net zero, and why the Climate Change committee is suggesting that council spend some of it’s unallocated 2025 climate change budget on pulling together those pieces.
Bliss says that in order to qualify for provincial and federal funding programs that support pathways to net zero, the municipality needs a more complete assessment of what’s needed at the Civic Centre, after energy efficiency measures are taken.
Bliss says there are “bits and pieces” of missing information, such as “how much it would cost to put solar panels on the roof, and what would be the payback period, and these sorts of things.”
Back in 2018 the town asked Beauséjour Renewable Energy Cooperative for an assessment of a solar array project for the roof of the civic centre. The 2018 report says an array on the roof could produce about 125,000 kwh of electricity per year, putting a dent in, but not coming close to eliminating the energy used by the facility. The recommendation from Beauséjour in 2018 was to focus on energy efficiency first: to invest in reducing the electricity demand in the building, before looking at energy production.
That philosophy is behind why the climate change advisory committee asked for an energy audit of municipal buildings last year. Bliss says the idea of net zero is an aspirational goal, and might end up involving a variety of initiatives.
“Net zero itself is very difficult to achieve if you’re only looking at one isolated project,” says Bliss. “The terminology now tends to be more ‘near net zero’, which basically just do the best job you can do, right?”
The town of Tantramar has dabbled in solar arrays. In 2022, a small 12 kW array of 32 panels was installed on the roof of the Bill Johnstone park activity centre. In 2023, the array produced about 12,600 kWh of electricity, close to the estimated annual usage for the building of about 15,000 kWh.
Over in Amherst, the town took advantage of Nova Scotia government programs to help it install a 75-kilowatt solar array on its stadium in 2020. The project covers about one third of the stadium roof and is estimated to generate an annual output of about 123,000 kWh, which is sold directly to Nova Scotia power under a 20-year contract.
Council leadership needed
Bliss says that a big project like the Tantramar Civic Centre would show residents that the town is taking climate change mitigation seriously.
“Six years ago, the previous town council declared a climate crisis,” says Bliss, pointing out that four of the current slate of Tantramar council were on that previous council. “The crisis has not been revoked, and yet, we haven’t seen really anything overtly, publicly, to say we’re responding to this crisis,” says Bliss. “So here’s a good, simple project, very doable. It’s going to save money in terms of energy costs… Why wouldn’t you go ahead and do something like this while you’re waiting for all these other plans and what-not to catch up?”
Bliss says the committee would like to see Tantramar achieve a near net zero Civic Centre by 2032, but it could even be achieved in a shorter time frame. Either way, he says the drive for the intiative needs to come from council.
“What the town administration tells us is, quite correctly, is they don’t set policy. They just action what they’re told to do, right?” says Bliss. “So we’re asking council to say we should do this.”
