Sustainability Innovator − Technology Award

The Opportunity

Create a meaningful environmental impact with a relatively small capital investment from Coquitlam Centre in Coquitlam, British Columbia by implementing heat recovery to reclaim and reuse the current system’s waste heat.

The Value Proposition​

The Property Management team at the one-million-square-foot, two-level super-regional shopping centre, in partnership with Trane and SES Consulting, implemented a strategy to provide substantial energy savings by using heat recovery. The strategy involved:

• • Embedding the principles of sustainability into its business, with the belief that the conservation of resources is a corporate responsibility
  • Understanding that the configuration of Coquitlam Centre’s mechanical room, with chillers and boilers in the same space, created an opportunity to reclaim and reuse the heat system’s waste
  • Implementing an avant-garde heat reclaim solution
  • Changing the Heat Recovery Chiller (HRC) configuration to operate at a higher capacity and higher efficiency, reducing operating costs and the Centre’s footprint

The Result

Coquitlam Centre’s heat recovery project resulted in a 70% reduction in annual gas consumption, 4% reduction in electricity, and 35% reduction in annual greenhouse gas (GHGs).

Over a million kilowatt-hours per year savings, with a record payback of 2.5 years. A similar switching of heating fuel from gas to electricity has an estimated payback of 7 years.

​​​The Centre is also saving water due to decreased cooling tower use.

​​​The Centre’s HRC may become the best tool for cutting GHGs in the building sector in the Tri-Cities area (Anmore, Belcarra, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam and Port Moody).