Going green: Fredericton looks at renewable energy program

The City of Fredericton is looking to develop a renewable energy program and has hired consulting firm, MCW Custom Energy Solutions Ltd., to figure out how to make that happen.

The engineering consulting firm based out of Toronto will be looking at new ways Fredericton can use renewable energy and how it can be more efficient.

On behalf of the firm, Carmen Travis, gave a presentation at a council–in–committee meeting on Monday night. He said the city is already off to a good start, but the company will try to find ways to improve energy conservation.

"They've done a lot of good work with moving forward with energy conservation," said Travis. "They know what a lot of the opportunities are and they've been addressing them with capital budgets as they can."

"It's a matter now of putting that at a larger program approach and trying to scale it and find a way to bite off larger bites."

Implementation

The report will be presented to Fredericton City Council in April. From there, Travis said it will be up to the city as to how they want to tackle the suggestions.

"It will really come down to the mechanics of how it all comes together and how it works through the city council and the city approval process, and what the city can manage," said Travis.

"So they can be very quick projects that can be done in a short period of time or they could be many years."

Dylan Gamble, the city's director of engineering and operations, said the city has budgeted $100,000 for renewable energy. But that money has yet to be put toward any specific project.