The new Civic Hospital will affect your health in more ways than one
Photo: Plans for a new Civic Hospital campus at Dow’s Lake include a high-efficiency central utility plant that is to use new technologies to lower the hospital’s overall carbon footprint.
Photo Credit: engage.Ottawa.ca
The new Civic Hospital will affect your health in more ways than one
By Cecile Wilson
[Atmospheric CO2 at Mauna Loa, Hawaii on 18th January 2026: 428.29]
The healthcare field is a significant source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and airborne pollutants, contributing about 4.6 per cent of the world’s GHG emissions. Medical professionals realize the danger to human health that pollution and severe weather events can pose – increases in lung and cardiovascular problems, dementia, asthma, cancers and heat stroke, all of which increase human suffering and elevate costs for taxpayers and for home insurance.
That’s why it’s noteworthy that in 2023, The Ottawa Hospital (TOH) announced a “high-efficiency” Central Utility Plant (CUP) for the new Civic Hospital that will use “innovative technology to lower TOH’s overall carbon footprint.” It was also stated that the CUP would eventually become the foundation of Hydro Ottawa’s “new district energy network, improving access to clean energy in our community.”
It sounds good, but exactly what does this mean?
What is ‘sustainable’?
Hospitals’ utility needs include electrical power, heating, cooling and domestic hot water. At CHEO, for example, these needs are met by a fossil gas (a.k.a. “natural” gas) plant that is connected to the electrical grid. The gas plant supplies the hospital with heat captured as a by-product of electricity generation, steam. The electricity is sent to both the hospital and the grid.
In 2009, TransAlta (one of the plant owners) installed a gas turbine that lowered the emissions intensity of the plant by six per cent. Technically, this increased the gas plant’s efficiency, but it still added GHGs and pollutants to the air. To protect our health, we need to remove GHGs and pollutants.
While the final design of the CUP was due for approval in 2024, details of its makeup are not easily publicly available. People I spoke with expect it will be gas-fired, but they suggested a range of alternatives for heating and cooling sources.
Wastewater Energy Transfer
Wastewater Energy Transfer or WET systems extract heat from the wastewater in the sewer line and use that heat to warm buildings. The temperature of wastewater varies between five and 20 degrees – warmer than the outside temperature in the winter and cooler than the average outside temperature in the summer – so it can be used for both heating and cooling purposes. This largely avoids the need to burn fossil fuels to generate heat in the winter and saves both water and electricity in the summer.
At Toronto Western Hospital, a WET system installed by Noventa supplies 90 per cent of the hospital’s heating and cooling needs and has reduced its GHG emissions by about 8,400 metric tonnes per year. A capstone project by five senior environmental engineering students, under the supervision of Professor Amir Hakami, found that WET could provide 49 per cent of the hospital’s heating needs and 123% of its cooling needs without fossil fuels. The students’ findings received a favourable response from the Civic Hospital’s project engineer.
In Ottawa, a WET system due to be completed this year will heat and cool the two Odenak project residential towers a kilometer away from the new Civic. The towers are part of the Dream LeBreton project.
Open-loop Geothermal
In Corner Brook, Newfoundland, the 600,000 square foot Western Memorial Regional Hospital is heated and cooled by the largest geothermal system in Canada. Consisting of about half a million linear feet of piping 600 feet deep, the geothermal system pumps an anti-freeze and water solution through the pipes and avoids the need for fossil fuels. It also removes the need for cooling towers, reducing the noise on site.
Closed-loop Geothermal
Mike Fletcher, a former City of Ottawa project manager turned consultant, offered closed-loop geothermal as another option. An open-loop system requires a water source, such as a well, groundwater or even a surface lake. The water is pumped from the water source into a heat pump system, which transmits the heat to the building in the winter and extracts the heat from the building in the summer and puts it into the water source. The advantage of open-loop geothermal energy is that it is very efficient and does not require a lot of piping. The closed-loop method could also serve as the basis for a district energy system.
Connection to the electrical grid
Perhaps the most obvious alternative for cleaner energy is to connect the CUP to the electrical grid. By law, the utility plant would still require emergency generators which typically run on diesel or propane. Fletcher pointed out that renewable diesel made from vegetable oils, used cooking oils and animal fats is chemically identical to petroleum diesel but yields 90% fewer emissions.
The Cowichan District Hospital due to open next year will be all-electric, the first fossil-fuel-free hospital in B.C. and the first in Canada to achieve Zero Carbon Building – Design™ certification from the Canada Green Building Council. One of the partners in that hospital build is Ellis-Don.
The proof is in the pudding
In the coming months I hope to learn more about the Civic Hospital’s specific goals for “improving planetary health” and how it will “support the health of our community.” The money saved by selecting fossil-free utility systems and avoiding GHG- and pollution-provoked illnesses could be diverted into patient care. Our community health depends on it. Stay tuned!
Cecile Wilson lives in the Glebe and is active in the CAFES Environment Committee and the Climate Misinformation Project, as well as other climate-based organizations in the city.