It’s a lot easier to be green when the taxpayer is footing the bill.

Axman, you are correct. As I remember a sign in one of the HVAC shops in town.

“Only the very rich can afford cheap heat”

How good is Geothermal, sounds great on paper, until you start paying for the electricity to move the water thru the pumps.

“The City of Prince George is tooting its own horn over the Downtown District Energy System, which is says reduced the City’s natural gas consumption by 17,000 gigajoules last year.”

At about $4 / GJ, that’s about $78,000. How many millions did the DES cost?

So how much did the Downtown district Energy System cost the city of Prince George? Was it so heavily subsidized by the upper governments that we could not refuse it?

So, about twenty years ago, the city was willing to change the zoning so that Lakelands will need to move out of the downtown core and not to make anymore new investments. This decade, Lakelands is their golden child because they are the center of the DES.

Betcha there is backup for the solar water heating, so where is the savings since there are two heating systems employed.

Do they get geothermal heating also kind of left that out? If a public facility has geothermal heating it also needs backup so again two heating systems instead of one.

Like what Axman said…

And where is the city getting the hog to burn in their energy system? Lakeland? Oops it was getting the hog from Lakeland until it blew up! So how much is it costing the city to truck in the hog and how green is that or are they still burning natural gas to heat their boiler? Same to you UNBC, how much is it costing to truck in the hog from Isle Pierre in fuel dollars and emissions from the burning of the fuel in the trucks? Oh the costs of being green!

Good points Noway. I regularly use FFTW/Greenway, twice this winter I was nearly run off the road by chip trucks, the second time if there hadn’t been a snow bank I would have been down the bank (10′ drop). On top of using the trucks to bring in their fuel, what damage is being done to Tyner Blvd? I’m pretty sure that road was not constructed with large trucks being part of the regular traffic flow.

Not ready for a wind turbine on top of cranbrook Hill? How about it, city council? The money saved with that might pay for a new PAC. Could happen.

Harbinger are you being sarcastic? Hopefully.

Sarcastic? Yup. But then again, “many a true word spoken in jest”. You just wait until the wind turbine salesman makes a call at city hall.

I remember the movie “The Music Man” and watched the monorail episode on “The Simpsons”. Cities are suckers when it comes to buying anything. Even a PAC.

One of the things we do not seems to get is full information about the effectiveness of all these systems.

Since it is taxpayers who are paying it, I believe we should be seeing the total cost of the new system and the one the system replaced, including the capital as well as operating costs. The whole thing should be treated like a small research project to be shared with other communities as well as businesses.

It is important that we have good examples of what works and what does not and share that with the community so that other learn from the successes and the failures.

BUT ….. this City really does not understand such notions. They want the general public to be ignorant of what goes on in the city.

…”They want the general public to be ignorant of what goes on in the city”.

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Yet they hire big buck “communications people” at city hall. That sure makes sense to me. I’ll pay for that.

Yes, this stuff is all misleading, we as taxpayers / general public are or will be paying for it ….they get to collect.

These are all good news stories, however in the near future when the contracts run out for recycling, you can bet the back roads and bush will be full of garbage, recycle product chemicals, batteries oils and all, then the major efforts that have been put in place over the last dozen or so years will all be in vain.
Brown will then be the new green!

Ahh… reading all the comments posted before 7:00 pm on this discussion thread, and some posted within the last hour, makes me feel overwhelmingly optimistic about our green energy future (sarcasm off).

Happy Earth Day everyone, and congratulations to UNBC on yet more recognition for being a green energy leader in our country. Good on the City of Prince George for having the vision to build a Downtown District Energy System. Bring on more of these green energy initiatives!

Some of us recognize the movement towards clean green energy is inevitable, and will be part of our future, others? Well… others may recognize it, but it is painfully obvious, they sure don’t like it! Progress towards the use, and eventual acceptance, of green technology must be scary for some of these people, so set in their ways.

http://www.cartoonstock.com/lowres/environmental-issues-technological_advancement-environmentalist-green_policy-electric_car-green_technology-mwu120413l.jpg

Let’s face it, my comments are such an interesting and amusing read ;-)

gus: “Since it is taxpayers who are paying it, I believe we should be seeing the total cost of the new system and the one the system replaced, including the capital as well as operating costs. The whole thing should be treated like a small research project to be shared with other communities as well as businesses.”

If the City did that, the DES would never have been built. The taxpayers would have said, “Are you nuts?”

Of course Peeps doesn’t care if money is thrown away on feel-good pie in the sky projects. Tax money grows on trees, don’t you know?

Did you get banned using the people#1 name and had to use another? Maybe your new handle should be people#1akabeinghuman.

I would just like to take the opportunity to say thank to REAPS for their service to the community and the environment. This year marks their 25th anniversary and they do amazing programs to reduce waste, encourage recycling and teach kids about the environment. Their annual city-wide spring clean up is next Sunday for anyone who would like to participate http://www.reaps.org/

Oh come on peeps even you must think it’s retarded to truck in hog fuel from Isle Pierre using chip trucks all in the name of being so called green! How are they reducing pollution by doing that?

Anyone know when the link to the Osprey cam is back?

Any private businesses signed onto any of these loosely green projects and how come we never see the full costs reported or costs of these grand experiments?. How many taxpayer junkets have there been to far of lands for so called studies?

How has that Nissan experiment been working out?

How bout a good news story???? Thank you to Star Bucks for the free coffee and tea on Earth day. If you bring in your travel mug, they give you free coffee. Certainly would like to see Timmy meet the challenge or Second Cup.. Apparently Star Bucks been doing this for a few years now.. Once again, thank you for being a good Corporate Sponsor of what Green is

So how is free coffee greener than paid?

No paper cup to throw out Seamutt. duh!! :-)

Posted by: seamut on April 23 2014 1:15 AM
So how is free coffee greener than paid?

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The green stays in your pocket!

take you mug to timmys and get it filled is still no paper cup, duh!

Going green is as much as a farce as buying organic. But they both bring in a lot of money.

I heard the Leaf was a failure so now they are looking at the Tesla model S.

Earth day is supported by the government yet there still is no incentive to buy solar power. If you choose to go solar energy, it’s a very expensive way at the start up. The government doesn’t want us to stop using electric or gas. Earth day is a crock….

Went to the Home Show a few years ago. I asked the guy flogging soar panels why they are taxed. He didn’t have an answer. Shouldn’t they be tax free to encourage some people to buy? Just sayin’.

solar…faulty keyboard.