The City of Edmonton’s Leading Sustainable Development: Blatchford District Energy Sharing System

Following the closure of the Edmonton City Centre Airport in 2013, the City of Edmonton approved the redevelopment of the 536-acre Blatchford Field, with the vision transforming the Blatchford area into a leading example of sustainable development. The availability such a large unoccupied parcel within Edmonton’s downtown presents a unique opportunity to design an interconnected, sustainable, and low carbon community for over 30,000 residents. The Blatchford development’s heating, cooling, and hot water needs are to be met by an innovative district energy sharing system (DESS). This DESS interconnects all buildings within the development into a nodal network of High-Density Polyethylene (HDPE) piping, delivering ambient temperature water to hyper-efficient building-side heat pumps for heat and cooling. This innovative district energy technology allows for load sharing between buildings and is supplemented with renewable energy sourcing from a geoexchange field and a future sewer heat exchange (SHX) system. There are many novel design features in the Blatchford development that provide insight into how DESSs can be adopted efficiently and effectively to create a self-sustaining low carbon community. Blatchford can be considered a proof of concept of how this technology is not only becoming more accessible, but necessary to reduce emissions in the race to combat climate change.