Environmental GRI Performance Indicators
EN7 – Initiatives to reduce indirect energy consumption and reductions achieved.
Distributed energy sources are small-scale power generation technologies – generators powered by a number of fuels, most commonly natural gas or diesel, or alternative and renewable technologies such as fuel cells and solar photovoltaic cells – located close to homes or businesses. They are an important emerging energy option that can provide customers with reliable, locally-generated power as well as heat, while reducing energy loss, deferring electrical transmission and distribution costs, and lowering overall emissions of air pollutants.
Enbridge Gas Distribution (EGD) continued to progress in 2007 in the development of a market for small gas-fired on-site generation.
EGD led the initiative to successfully change the last remaining piece of regulation in Ontario so as to permit natural gas-fed emergency generation. This came with the November release of the Ontario Fire Code. In addition, all six gas utilities in Ontario successfully collaborated to develop and launch a formal provincial gas utility emergency generator policy that involves a standardized design of the gas service.
In early 2008, EGD installed the second pilot Combined Heat Emergency and Power (CHeP) plant in Canada – a small gas-fired unit at a Toronto Community Housing Corporation building in downtown Toronto. The customer plans to monitor the performance of this unit, and to install additional units in other buildings in its housing inventory.
Supporting energy diversification in Ontario
Enbridge Gas Distribution supports the Ontario Power Authority’s Smart Gas Strategy where natural gas is used in high-value and high-efficiency power generation. Natural gas generation complements intermittent renewable power such as wind and solar and is used as dispatchable peaking power, providing voltage support for grid stability and local system reliability lessening the likelihood of brown-outs or black-outs. It is also used in high-efficiency combined heat and power applications.
During 2007 and 2008, Enbridge Gas Distribution has been completing new infrastructure to distribute gas to two natural gas-fired generation customers – Goreway Station and Portlands Energy Centre. The latter has started commercial operations to provide clean, reliable energy to the City of Toronto. We have also begun building the gas distribution infrastructure for Thorold Cogen, a highly efficient combined heat and power operation that will generate electricity and supply thermal requirements to a neighbouring paper plant.