Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, Stoicism, and, Climate Change

Shortly after the massacre in Christchurch New Zealand I asked one of my student co-workers---who happens to be non-white and the daughter of an immigrant---what she thought about the rise of white nationalism and the "alt-right". Her response was that she never pays any attention to the news and doesn't really know anything at all about that sort of stuff. I was kinda surprised. She isn't a stupid person. She has a university degree. She isn't overwhelmed by responsibilities like having children or a business---she just doesn't want to pay attention.

A few days before, another co-worker had made a point that is related. We were talking about having children (neither of us do) and mentioned that he'd noticed that people who have children rarely seem to be concerned about stuff like climate change---even though he thought that if you did have them, the logical thing would be to be totally freaked out about how environmental catastrophes would affect your progeny.

This got me thinking about the huge swath of people in our society---perhaps even the majority---who don't seem to really care much about things that can and do have enormous impact on their lives. Why is this the case? I think I've come up with a hypothesis that might explain part of the problem. To explain it, I'm going to have to talk about a modern therapeutic tool that is based on ancient Roman philosophy. 

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I was listening to "The Sunday Edition" podcast today and it contained an interview between Michael Enright and Jay Rosen about how the media has covered Mueller's investigation of Donald Trump, and, the greater issues that the Trump presidency raises for journalism in general. It is an interesting conversation and I'd recommend it to readers. It ends with an observation: Rosen suggests that as media institutions continue to wither and die, citizens are going to have to develop personal connections to individual journalists---bypassing both large corporations and advertising. This is obviously something I support, which is why I put out "The Guelph-Back-Grounder" and suggest that readers share it on social media as well as subscribe through Patreon or put some money in the Tip Jar.

Another related issue comes from the latest Liberal budget which offers financial support for the media. It turns out that the way this support is designed it will never be anything more than a mechanism to prop up existing legacy media. Your tax dollars will go to "The Toronto Star", "The Globe and Mail", and,---gag---"The Toronto Sun". Not a penny will go to "The Back-Grounder" or any other "indie" or "citizen media". This is disappointing, but of course, not surprising.   

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One of the most effective modern tools for psychotherapy, cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT), is based on the idea that our mind is not the atomic whole that Christianity and our criminal justice system assumes, but rather a complex homeostatic entity where different elements---logic, emotions, hormones, past history, etc---interact in order to create the illusion of unitary consciousness. The key issue here is that one part of that community has a limited ability to change what other parts focus on and this can have long term consequences for our mental health.

That is to say we have an ability to choose to obsess about the injustices of the past, worry about the future; or instead, choose to focus on the here-and-now. In addition, we can learn to control our emotions by developing habits and tactics aimed at breaking up the destructive patterns of behaviour that can form in relationships. One practical way of, for example, diffusing anxiety is to develop the habit of paying attention to where you have centered your attention. People who are anxious tend to fixate on their own body and become oblivious to their surroundings---"is my fly done up?" "Should I have my legs crossed?" "Is my hair mussed up?" And so on. The idea is to force yourself to instead change your focus of attention to the person you are speaking with. "That guy sure has a nice smile." "That sweater might be a bit warm for this hall." "Where did she get those shoes?" Studies have shown that switching attention like this does wonders to lessen anxiety.

This sort of work doesn't just take place within the minds of people, it can also be useful for redirecting dysfunctional relationships. For example, I once heard of a man who had a mother who tended to save up all her frustrations and anger about his siblings and "dump" them on him whenever he came to visit. As a result, he absolutely hated visiting her and even started to get migraine headaches on the rare occasions he did. His therapist suggested he could "short-circuit" the dynamic between mother and son if he always brought her a gift---like flowers---to "deflect" her habit of using him to vent all her negativity. The idea is that when she was ready to start to complain, the gift pushed her to instead feel grateful for the roses and occupied her mind as she put them in a vase. This offered a "breathing space" where the son might have a chance to change the conversation towards something more positive.

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The two psychologists who developed this system:  Aaron T. Beck and Albert Ellis both acknowledge that the Greco-Roman practical philosophy of Stoicism was instrumental to developing this therapy.

Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoicism.
Photo by Paolo Monti, c/o Wiki Commons

What the ancient Stoics focused on was the ability of one part of the mind to influence other parts through the use of discursive, logical reasoning.

Here are a few examples of the Stoic worldview encapsulated in pithy quotes:

Anything in any way beautiful drives its beauty from itself and asks nothing beyond itself. Praise is no part of it, for nothing is made worse or better by praise.  Marcus Aurelius 

Cling tooth and nail to the following rule:  Not to give in to adversity, never to trust prosperity, and always to take full note of fortune's habit of behaving just as she pleases, treating her as if she were actually going to do everything it is in her power to do. Whatever you have been expecting for some time comes as less of a shock.  Seneca 

Man is disturbed not by things, but by the views he takes of them. Epictetus

The important issue for Stoics was to try to step outside of the interior dimension of personal distress and look situation from a totally object, impersonal viewpoint.

Man is disturbed not by things, but by the views he takes of them.  Epictetus  

Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.  Marcus Aurelius

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The reason I've mentioned both Cognitive Behaviour Therapy and Stoicism is because it seems to me that lots of people in our society are doing something similar when it comes to distressing social trends. As near as I can tell, many parents are choosing to avoid thinking about the awful and increasingly frantic news that comes from the scientific community about climate change. They aren't doing this as a conscious form of therapy, but simply because it hurts to think about raising children to live in a world that will become more and more miserable as every year goes by. Similarly, it has to be pretty scary for a person of colour to contemplate that some white nationalist gun nut can pop out of the shadows to kill them and their friends pretty much at any given moment.

There is nothing wrong with developing strategies for exerting some control over your emotions. It is debilitating to constantly feel dread about the future. The problem is, however, that if too many people use this tactic too often, it is tremendously dangerous to society. To understand this point, consider the difference between Stoicism and the earlier Greek philosophers like Socrates and Plato. I'd suggest that they would be appalled by the Stoics because it was aimed at learning to accommodate yourself to a world where you have absolutely zero influence over the community. And that's the difference between the Athenian Democracy and the Roman Empire. Socrates was a citizen of a society where it was expected that he would take part in a collective decision-making process and where he had actually fought as a foot soldier in order to promote Athenian policy. Plato's most famous work's title is usually translated as The Republic, but a much more accurate translation would be The Polis---which could be translated as "the self-governing community", which is where words like "politics", "policy", and, "police" come from.

In contrast, the Stoic philosophers lived in a huge Empire which was ruled by an autocratic despot---the Emperor. There were "citizens" in the Empire, but this was simply a legal designation that conferred certain privileges on the bearer---with no responsibilities or authority.  In fact, I've heard that the Empire was so fearful of collective decision-making that it actually banned volunteer fire departments because this would encourage people to think that their city belonged to them. The army wasn't composed of citizen heavy infantry, but rather career soldiers who were schooled in "professionalism", loyalty to their unit and commander, and, paid in land and citizenship once they had finished their term of service.   

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We live in strange times. On the one hand, we live in an era where the political community (ie:  Plato's Polis) has expanded dramatically in many different ways. Gays, women, people of colour, etc, have many more rights than before. At the same time, however, masses of people feel that they live in a huge, booming, complex world where they have absolutely no influence at all. They believe that "all politicians are the same" and that our democratic institutions are not much more than a sham. They also increasingly reflexively dismiss any and all news coverage as being "fake" and consider any involvement in the public sphere as being a total and utter waste of time and effort.

This mural used to grace the side of the building now home to the Breezy Corners Restaurant
in downtown Guelph, but I found it on a British Website devoted to non-violent revolution. 

I'm certainly aware of the limitations of political involvement, but looking at the governments of the USA, Ontario, Canada, and, Guelph only a fool would suggest that all parties do exactly the same things. They may only operate in a very small window of opportunity, but the different choices they make can have a huge impact on people's lives. Moreover, parliamentary politics is only a tiny part of the real political sphere. Most of the really important decisions that our society makes come about from things like community organizing, lobbying campaigns, protests, and, building practical alternatives to the status quo. That's how civil rights for people of colour, gay rights, access to therapeutic abortion, legal birth control, legislation to end acid rain and preventing the destruction of the ozone layer, etc, all came about. 

Yes, listening to the news can be pretty painful. And a lot of it really is phony as a three dollar bill, but deciding to never pay any attention to it again is not the only option for dissipating that pain. You can be discriminating in your choice of news sources (like supporting "the Back-Grounder") and limit your consumption instead of cutting it off totally. An even more productive method is to get involved. There is no greater antidote to feeling alone in a hostile and frightening world than to connect with others in a community devoted to making the world a better place. It is always better to light a candle than it is to curse the darkness!

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Furthermore, I say to you---climate change must be dealt with!

I'm Turning Into a Woman---.

It occurred to me the other day that I'm turning into a woman. No, I'm not "coming out of the closet" as a trans-sexual person or anything like that. Instead, I'm saying that I am beginning to have a greater appreciation of what it's like to live as a woman in a sexist world because of the changes that I am going through as I age. I turn 60 next month and for the last few years I've been going through quite a few physical changes and they've totally changed my relationship with work and other people.

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First, a little background. I am a big guy: 6 foot 3 inches and over 200 lbs. And when I was younger, I was really, really strong. How strong? Well, my brother and I used to load market-size hogs (220 lbs) by grabbing each other's arms under the pig while squatting, and, throwing the pig over the tailgate of our pickup truck. At a party---in a excess of drunken stupidity---I once showed off by shoulder-pressing a full-grown, normal-sized woman. (Do I have to mention that she was not happy about this?) As a result, I've sorta just accepted that when push came to shove I could probably deal with just about anything the world can throw at me.

But that's changed. I'm certainly not the strongest guy at work now and haven't been for a while. To be fair, part of this is because the boss hired two young "jock type" guys who are much closer to 7 feet tall and weigh more than I do. I've also lost a lot of my strength. In addition, I have had pretty intense bouts of sciatic and tendonitis that have taught me to be very careful about what I lift. I also have a lot of arthritis, especially in my hands and feet. 

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The above isn't an attempt to gain sympathy. I'm probably still in better shape than most people. (Taijiquan is actually a really good exercise for older people!) But I've benefited from thinking about  what I have taken for granted in life and the nature of "male privilege". That's the thing about privilege, the key part of it is you take it so for granted that you don't even know it's there until it goes away.

One thing that I've noticed about this is that it has changed the way I function at work. It really bugs me to do this, but I sometimes have to ask someone else to help me because something is beyond my physical abilities. Even worse, I sometimes have to refuse to do something for fear of hurting myself.

This is an interesting issue, because to a very large extent the whole issue of strength and weakness at work is a totally artificial concept. What we consider "acceptable" or "too much" comes down to specific decisions. For example, at work we sometimes get asked to move extremely heavy, large, awkward power desks that don't easily fit through office doors or onto elevators. Moreover, because of their design, you cannot use any of the standard moving equipment (fridge cart, piano cart, etc) on them. I used to move stuff like this without thinking. But because of my failing strength I went through a phase of being increasingly thoughtful and even angry that my place of work buys these idiotic things---let alone asks us to move them.

These really hard jobs sometimes have a privileged aspect to them in that they are often the last places where you can still get good pay and benefits. I suspect that men in work like this have an unconscious understanding that the only reason that they make the money they do is because the work is hard and somewhat dangerous. If people who aren't "big galoots" can start doing this work, it means that it will eventually become "just another job" and the premium pay will disappear. As a result, a great many aspects of blue collar work are built around the idea that the average working man is built like king kong---eighty lb bags of concrete, 74 lb sheets of drywall, etc. This means that any small woman is simply "scaled out" of the job---even though there is really no reason why bags of concrete and sheets of drywall couldn't be smaller and weigh less. In nations where there isn't this sort of "heavy lift premium", women are routinely hired to do hard physical labour and they just shift smaller loads. For example, consider the following YouTube of women building a road in India. (Which isn't to diminish the hard work involved, but it is obviously something that they can do instead of something that is impossible.)

Carrying loads on the head is important to their ability to do the job, but it 

comes at a price. I've read that you can break your neck doing this.

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Blue type. Yadda-yadda-yadda. Subscribe through Patreon, toss something in the tip jar. Indie media yadda-yadda-yadda, share on social media. Make the world a better place, blah-blah-blah.

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Another thing I've had to reconsider comes from a comment that's been made to me several times by older women. They made a point of saying that I was an exceptional young man because I actually paid attention to and was interested in what they had to say. They told me that one thing that they found hard to accept was the way they became "invisible" as they aged. I'm beginning to notice the same thing. I've found that more and more young people simply don't have the time or interest to interact with me.

Being who I am, I admit that I often say things that are so out-of-sync with conventional wisdom that people just assume that I don't know what I'm talking about. But I've been doing this all my life. I suspect the key issue is that being an old man I am now someone (like women, brown people, etc) that can be safely "tuned out" by other folks. Again, that privilege thing is noticed when it starts to disappear---. As a result, I've learned to "bite my tongue" and keep my mouth shut unless I think that there's a chance that someone might actually listen to what I have to say. This makes me wonder about how many useful ideas are out there in grey heads that we never hear because they've learned no one wants to listen. And this, in turn, makes me wonder how many women, people of colour, disabled folks, etc, have had to get used to not being "part of the conversation" for most of their life.

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I don't want to leave the impression that I am now a member of an "oppressed class" or that I now know everything there is to know about being pushed to the margins of life. That would be absurd. I have and still do reap great rewards for being born a white man in a racist, sexist society. But I do think that a smart person takes advantage of every opportunity they have to learn a little bit more about what it means to be a human being. And I think that as we age there comes a time when our position in society begins to change and this affords an opportunity to get at least a glimpse of what it is like to be someone else. Only a fool would miss taking advantage of such an opportunity.

Furthermore, I say to you---climate change must be dealt with!

District Energy: Politics

And Now We Start to Talk Politics

I hope readers' heads are swimming from my discussion about the economics of district energy. That was the point. Sometimes I hear people talk about business as if it is simply a question of research and mathematical analysis. To hear them talk, all you have to do is develop a sound business plan and if the numbers work out, you borrow the money, and, make your millions. Well, it ain't that simple. Many business folks won't admit it, but a great deal of what you need to be successful in business is luck. That's because even if you are the greatest financial genius who ever lived, there are always going to be a great many things that you simply don't know enough about to make a "fool-proof investment". That's why I put in an editorial talking about "wicked problems" because if ever there was one, this is it.

As a general case I find that it's more useful to look at political conflict from the point of view of policy and general trends instead of personality, which I find may make for a more "juicy" story, but not one that helps people get a handle on a complex issue. But having said that, I realize that politics is also important. So it's time to put on my rubber Wellies, get out the manure fork, and get to that nasty job that took up so much time in my childhood.

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So what exactly am I doing with this blog? For one thing, I'm trying to fill a void that currently exists in local news. Secondly, I'm trying to create something of a "public record" that students, researchers, and, concerned citizens can use to learn about local issues. Based on feedback I get, I know that for at least some Guelph citizens I'm already filling that goal. I'm also trying to convince people to totally rethink their relationship to the news media in general. That's what this blue type part is about. I'm trying to convince people that they should be prepared to pay for the news they consume and stop relying on giant Internet companies to provide it for free. Mainly that's because it really isn't, there's always a hidden agenda of one sort or another when it comes to something that's "free". I'm also having some success on that score---people are subscribing through Patreon and contributing through the tip jar. But to really make the point I need to have more subscribers so other people can have a chance of following Adam Donaldson and myself, and try to make a living by creating truly independent news sources. If you can afford it, why not sign up as a regular subscriber? Patreon allows very small regular payments, and the important thing is to get a lot of people making small payments rather than a small number of people making bigger ones (although that would be appreciated too!)

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I've been working through back issues of Gerry Barker's Guelph Speaks, Adam Donaldson's Guelph Politico, and, using the Internet Archive's "Wayback Machine" to look at Cam Guthrie's election blog and as near as I can tell, the district energy systems were not an issue during the 2014 election. The big thing that people were hammering away at instead was the legal problems associated with the company that build the new city hall: Urbacon. It appears that district energy only became an issue after the new mayor had taken over from Karen Farbridge.

The first indication I can find that Guthrie was interested in district energy comes from an item on the Mayor's blog dated October 8, 2015 where he says that in the past ten months 

I think we’ve made some wonderful inroads in developing a new culture throughout city hall, and around the community for that matter, which is focused on the betterment of the city on the whole.

he also wrote later on

If we as a city are stating these goals publicly, and the C.E.I. [Community Energy Initiative---ie, the over-arching framework that the district energy systems fit into] policy, framework and current governance and oversight structure are setup to help direct us to achieve those goals, then perhaps we should make sure they’re realistic and that we’re actually making a positive difference.

This is why very soon the community will see on an upcoming council agenda a request from me for staff to explore the best way to present a progress report on the C.E.I and to explore the best governance and oversight structure for implementing it.

These two quotes are filled with wonderfully ambiguous, emotive terms---like "a new culture" "focused on the betterment of the city on the whole", "realistic", and, "actually making a positive difference". It's hard to understand exactly what they mean other than being the bland "positive speak" blather that we expect from politicians and sales people. (It's the nature of the beast nowadays, so I don't really blame anyone who talks like this---even though in doing so they really don't convey much information.)

After looking through a lot of electioneering I did find one particular instance where I thought I actually saw some real emotional commitment from the mayor that I think is particularly relevant to this discussion. In Mr. Guthrie's campaign website (accessible through the Wayback Machine) I caught the following post on April 2, 2014. I think it's a rare look into what an elected official really feels, so I'm going to post it in it's entirety.

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Taxpayer or Citizen? 

There’s been quite a discussion going on in Guelph around the concept of whether those who live in the city are “taxpayers” or “citizens.” 

The discussion seems to have been started by Guelph Mercury columnist Susan Ratcliffe. It was continued in a Guelph Politico blog entry by Andy Donaldson. And recently culminated in panel discussion moderated by Mike Schreiner, leader of the Green Party of Ontario and included political advisor Ralph Benmurgui, CFRU’s Beyond the Ballot Box radio host Jan Hall and Guelph Citizen blogger Andy Best. All of these discussions have led to two conclusions. 

First: Citizens = good 

This is best seen in Ratcliffe’s column, where she wrote: “Taxpayers are focused only on the monetary cost of government actions to an individual. Broader-minded ‘citizens’ care about social benefits and community values. Taxpayers ask about the benefits to themselves. Citizens ask about the benefits to community building and well-being.” 

Second: Taxpayers = bad 

“I find the word ‘taxpayer’ deeply offensive,” the Guelph Mercury quoted Benmergui as saying. “Everyone has adopted this notion of corporate service. Taxpayers want the service they want and they don’t want to pay for services they don’t personally need. The notion of the common good has deteriorated. I’m worried there may be a crisis of citizenship.” 

As Donaldson wrote: “This vision narrows the complexities of governing on any level to utterly simplistic terms: taxes are fees for service, and we should pay the absolute minimum to get the services we want and just the services we want. That means garbage collection, hydro and water services, police, emergency responders, and clean and easy to navigate roads. Public transit, the arts, cultural events, environmental initiatives, and sustainable planning are luxuries, investments desired by the leftie elites who want to use the blood, sweat and tears of the ‘Taxpayer’ as seed money.” 

Mayor Karen Farbridge emphasized this concept during a question and answer period following one of her state of the city addresses. When asked why residents should pay increased taxes for downtown redevelopment when the return on investment could take at least a decade, Farbridge replied: “You’ve got to prime the pump”. 

The duality between “taxpayer” and “citizen” is ingenuous. The arguments are being made to frame the political discourse in one particular direction. If a politician wants to focus on the needs of the taxpayer, it means they have only one goal in mind: to cut taxes, reduce services and destroy the fabric of the community. If a politician speaks about citizens, it means, no matter the cost, they are concerned about the better good and that they feel they have the best interests of the residents in mind. 

There is no difference. We are both taxpayers AND citizens.

Whether we pay taxes directly through property taxes, income taxes or payroll taxes, or indirectly through user fees such as transit fares, recreational centre charges or development charges, we are taxpayers. And we benefit from those taxes. 

So, is it too much to ask those administrating the hard-earned dollars provided by taxpayers, to be good stewards of that money? We ask the same thing of the various non-profit organizations to which we contribute, so why can’t we ask the same thing of our municipalities? 

People also contribute to their community as volunteers, parents, voters, individuals, homeowners and employees. Everything we do contributes to the fabric of our community without any expectation of return. 

Are we “taxpayers?” Yes. 

Are we “citizens?” Yes 

We are all “citizen-taxpayers” or “taxpayer-citizens,” whichever you prefer. And there are probably a host of people living in the City of Guelph who define themselves the same way. 

It’s time to stop reviling “taxpayers” and celebrating “citizens.” It’s time to recognize and honor “citizen-taxpayers.” 

Thank you, 

Cam Guthrie

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I suppose the best statement of the citizenship ideal that Mr. Guthrie is taking issue with comes from the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy.

The idea is that living in society comes with just as many---if not more---responsibilities than rights. This is also an idea that the holocaust survivor and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl raised in his book Man's Search for Meaning. The thesis of that work is the idea that people are only really happy when they are able to believe in some purpose greater than themselves. He found that the only people who had a chance to survive in the NAZI concentration camps were those that had such commitments, whereas those who just lived for themselves simply withered and died under the harsh conditions. Based on this idea, he suggested that the United States should put up a statue of "Responsibility" to balance out the statue of Liberty. (Indeed there have been serious efforts to fund raise for and build such a thing.)

Artist's rendering of proposed San Diego 

"Statue of Responsibility", image from San Diego City Beat.

Image used under the "Fair Use" copyright provision.

The idea of calling voters "tax payers" instead hearkens to the idea that people live their own personal lives and that great, civic projects are just "moonshine" that wastes their hard-earned cash. That reminds me of my interview with Liz Sandals. In it I was asked what she thought was motivating the  Doug Ford government and Conservatism in general. She answered that she thinks that it comes down to a very simple prescription "the two things that I think he does believe, really strongly believes in, are "taxes are bad" and "government is bad"".

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This hearkens back to one of the ideas that I harped on in the editorial about wicked problems. People come to them with different agendas, even if they say that they are all in favour of same goal. I tossed out the idea that we should think about the term "preventing climate change" as another way of saying "preventing the human race from committing suicide". By doing so, I'm "upping the ante" when it comes to discussing the issue. Lots of people don't really think of it in terms of an existential crisis, but rather as "something nice if it doesn't lead to tax increases". This difference in emphasis isn't just a minor disagreement, but rather a totally different worldview that fuels completely different agendas. 

Totally by coincidence (this blog is not meant to be topical), this issue has recently become a big deal because Councilor James Gordon and Leanne Piper are calling for Guelph to follow Kingston and Hamilton's lead in Guelph declaring a climate change "emergency". Mayor Guthrie seems to opposed to this idea and was quoted in The Mercury website as saying 

“Declaring an emergency is not something to take lightly, and there are implications to doing so,” and,
“I am a person of action, not platitudes of words, and my fear that these types of discussions
get us away from actions and it’s more about just optics.”
Guelph's Mayor, Cam Guthrie. Photo from official City Website

I'm not about to make any definitive statement about where Mr. Guthrie fits on the "taxes are bad" Conservative scale. He does seem to be genuinely concerned about people with drug addictions and the homeless---among other things. I can also remember that the first time I met him he was involved in some sort of environmental project (sorry Cam, it was long time ago and I simply cannot remember what it involved.) He certainly seems like a nice guy. But he has "hitched his wagon" to the "taxes are bad" crowd, and even with the best of intentions, he's going to have to at least pay lip service to their worldview. And no matter how much he might protest, it is clear to me (ever looked at Guelph Speaks?) that a large percentage of those people have zero interest in the JFK motto of "ask not what your country can do for you, but rather what you can do for your country."

Having said all of that, this knife cuts both ways. People can say that they are in favour of preventing climate change and really mean "if it doesn't mean that we raise taxes". But other politicians can say exactly the same thing and mean "Goddam it, we've got to stop the human race from committing suicide!!!!!" But the fact of the matter is that because of the real and perceived attitudes of voters, both types of politicians can easily find themselves "biting their tongues" and offering bland platitudes about "baby steps". I suspect that that's part of the reason why emotions have risen both when people tried to make a distinction between "citizens" and "tax payers", and, when Councilors asked if the city should declare a climate change an "emergency". In both cases people are being asked to be "punk and plain" about what they really think in a system that often punishes them badly for doing so.

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If we keep the above issue in mind, I think what happened to the District Energy hubs makes perfect sense. They were designed not to be immediately cost-effective projects, but rather something like the "nose of the camel in the tent". 

Public domain image from "Windtoons.com", 

For those who haven't heard it, there is a teaching story about a Bedouin who allowed a camel to shove his nose in his tent only find out that once the nose was in, the rest of the beast inevitably follows. In the same way, if Guelph got used to the idea that energy for heating and air conditioning was just another commodity for the city to pipe under the roads, it would inevitably become just an accepted part of infrastructure---like water and sewage. And this would be one of those things that a Conservative hates: an increase in government size and a reason for taxes to go up.

In contrast, for anyone who has the hidden agenda of not wanting the human race to commit suicide there is a lot in favour of a district energy system. That's because the key part isn't the efficiencies that come from having one centralized source of hot and chilled water, but rather the distribution system that connects a bunch of different buildings to one centralized source. Right now the two hubs run off natural gas, but the  real hope of the people behind the system was that this could eventually be replaced by more sustainable fuel sources such as waste heat from industrial processes, geothermal or thermal-solar.

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Once this last point is understood, then it becomes easier to understand how another aspect of wicked problems comes into play. The point wasn't to come up with a system of heating and cooling buildings that would immediately pay for itself, but rather to be the first part of a new system that was going to be the first part of a revolution in how Guelph uses energy. If you looked at the systems from that perspective there really wasn't much wrong with them.

I've been told that the city hired outside consultants to do an analysis of the district energy hubs and I've found a staff document that was presented to Council on July 18th, 2016. It was prepared because Council wanted to make public a document that related to various items that they'd seen before in in camera (private) meetings.

“That the presentation and report on the financial history of the GMHI
[Guelph Municipal Holdings Incorporated---the city-owned company set
up to manage things like the district energy plants. WDH]
group of companies be referred to the June 13, 2016 Council meeting” 

“That the closed minutes and accompanying material of November 23,
2015 with respect to District Energy Strategic Long Term Financial Plan,
with the necessary redactions, be made public in conjunction with the
materials for June 13, 2016 Council.” 

“That the closed minutes and accompanying material of February 29,
2016 with respect to Decision Chronology: District Energy, be made public
with the necessary redactions in conjunction with the material for June
13, 2016 Council.”

The consultant is not directly mentioned, but on page three document makes reference to "Deloitte", so I think I can safely assume that it leans on work prepared by "Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited", which is a multinational technology consulting firm based in London, England.

Briefly stated, the staff report says that Deloitte's analysis suggested that the energy hubs are too small to make a big enough profit to pay off the money spent setting them up. Having said that, they are working relatively well and making enough money to pay for their on-going maintenance. In addition, the operating profit that they are making isn't enough to pay for any attempt to expand their client base. In addition, the city is "locked into" contracts with existing customers which means that there would be financial penalties for shutting down the plants. As a result, Council decided to stop looking for new customers, write off incurred capital costs as a "bad debt", and, keep the physical plants working.

What the bland "bureaucrat-speak" in this document seems to miss---according to conversations I've had with various people---is that the city never planned for these limited systems to pay for themselves in the short-term.  That's why the private sector is loathe to start these things up, even though they are willing to get involved once government has "proved the concept"---like with Enwave in downtown Toronto. They were supposed to be the first stage of a long-term city investment in a much larger system. It's the nature of district energy systems that you make a long-term commitment to build a "game changing" system for long-term development. To their point of view, the Mayor didn't direct staff to look at the system and they found out that it wasn't working. Instead, the Mayor directed staff and convinced Council to sabotage the system by starving it of secondary investment by not working to get new customers and invest in the system so it could adapt to their needs. District energy is always a question of big initial investment and long term pay off---which is why it generally won't work unless it is built the same way that governments build any other infrastructure system.

In effect, the nose of the camel got cut off before the rest of the beast could make it into the tent. "Stop climate change---if there are no new taxes" won out over "stop climate change before we commit suicide!!!!!" It's just another example of a group of people trying to get society to invest in a system that might have done something impressive to cut down on carbon emissions, and which got sabotaged and destroyed by people with a totally different agenda. Another bunch of victims got into political trouble because of a wicked problem.

Or did they?

That's the thing about wicked problems, I don't really have an opinion about this thing. It might very well be that our current mayor is right and these things would never have worked as intended. One thing I won't do, however, is fault the previous mayor and Council for trying to do something big to help the city do it's bit to stop climate change. When confronted by a wicked problem the last thing a society should do is just "kick the can down the road" and ignore it. They should be willing to take risks and make experiments to see what does and doesn't work. It might very well be that some future administration on Carden Street will do some more number crunching and restart the whole district energy initiative. It might also be that some private company will step in and buy them so they can do it. It might be that new technology will make the whole thing a total anachronism. But at the time reasonable people thought district energy was a good idea and they took a chance on it. It's the easiest thing in the world to kick wicked problems down the road, but if you do that long enough it turns out the "easiest path" leads to the worst results.

Where I might be tempted to point a finger---and remember I wrote "might be tempted", not "I blame them for"---is that there wasn't enough work done building a social consensus around exactly what the long-term plan for the district energy really was. If people thought that the district energy system was going to immediately make a profit and that that was going to be high enough to fund all future expansion, then it would have been a shock to find out that these were really demonstration projects for something that would require much more ambitious long-term investment. But again, it's very hard to sell the public on something like this when there are really powerful interests in society who are bound and determined to soft-peddle the sort of crisis our civilization is really facing. The tendency is always going to be for politicians of good will to try to "schmooze" the right thing into place because they believe that they will lose all power to do good if the body politic finds out what they really want to do. It's perfectly all right for me to thunder away about the importance of dealing with climate change, but I've never been able to get a job that didn't involve heavy, unskilled manual labour---let alone win elected office. You can't do anything at all if you don't get elected---and that has to involve sucking up to the often idiotic worldview of voting citizens. (Ever wonder why politicians are the way they are? Take a look at voters---.)

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I'll leave off with the most intelligent statement I've heard about climate change in a long time. They It comes from a remarkable 16 year old Swedish girl named Greta Thunberg who is now experiencing her "15 minutes of fame". This an edited address that she gave to the World Economic Forum at Davos in Switzerland.

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Furthermore, I say to you---climate change must be dealt with!

Wicked Problems

In writing about the district energy hubs in Guelph I've tried to emphasize the difficulty I've had in trying to understand what has happened with regard to them. In actual fact, I've come to the conclusion that this is the real story, not the economics of district energy, or, the politics that led to their creation and eventual "moth-balling". I think that the best value a reader can get from what I'm writing about them is to see the whole issue as an example of a "wicked problem". As such, I thought I'd devote an editorial to this general question in order to help explain exactly what I am trying to do with these two articles.

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C. West Churchman, image used
under "Fair Use" provision from
In Memory of C. West Churchman

The term itself was invented by a philosopher named C. West Churchman and first mentioned in a 1967 article in a management science journal. It's rather hard to define what a "wicked problem" is because the first characteristic that adheres to it is that there is no way to easily define or explain one. If you can't easily explain any particular example, you aren't going to be able to easily define the entire class.

Ludwig Wittgenstein in 1929
Public Domain image c/o
Wiki Commons. 

This doesn't mean that this something isn't real, however. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein got around this problem by describing what he called "family resemblance". This when you group a bunch of different things together not because they all have one thing in common, but rather because they each share several---but different---things in common. The name comes from the situation in families where you might say that so-and-so has his father's eyes, his mother's nose, his paternal grandfather's ears, etc.

What this means is that the concept of "wicked problem" is expressed by a list of items that people have noticed about some types of problems that extremely difficult to deal with (I hesitate to use the word "solve".) The following chart is one attempt to create such a list.

Used under the "Fair Use" provision of the Copyright Act,
Original Image from the "Stack Exchange" Website.

Looking at the above chart while thinking about the Guelph Community Energy Initiative and the District Energy program I can see some of the different elements expressed in it.

Let's start by looking at the statement "Every wicked problem is connected to others". This is true with district energy in that it flows from the issue of trying to make Guelph more energy efficient, which in turn, is really motivated by the question of "how can we get Guelph to take climate change seriously?" And, of course, all of these issues are directly linked to other, deeper problems of civic governance such as dependence on the automobile and wasteful suburban sprawl, which are linked to issues like parking, zoning, housing, etc.

All these issues straddle organizational and discipline boundaries---federal, provincial, and, municipal governance; plus zoning, planning, and, engineering.

And, of course, there are multiple stakeholders who have conflicting agendas. Business people want to make money---indeed because of the "fiduciary responsibility" it would be illegal if they didn't. Municipal employees want to keep their jobs, which means keeping their heads down and not "making waves" when the ideological winds blow from Council. Councillors want to get re-elected, which means pandering to what the small fraction of the citizenry who actually votes wants---whether it makes any sense or not. Sprinkled on top of this political doughnut is the vague idea most politicians have of wanting to do good. Unfortunately, this very often this gets polluted by the ideological "short-cuts" people take when they look at the world.

One thing that makes the conflicting agendas even more difficult to sort out is that the core motivating issue boils down to "Do you want to stop the human race from committing suicide through climate change?" No one is going to answer "No", but the tricky bit is how big a priority they are willing to make it. This ranges from "I'm against committing suicide---but only if it doesn't mean higher taxes" to the idea that the nation needs to be put on a "war footing". The problem is, no one is going to say in a speech "I want to stop climate change---but only if taxes don't go up". Instead, they will say "I want to stop climate change" and "I'm against new taxes"----and blithely ignore the fact that you probably can't do the former without the latter. And if one side is saying "we'll end climate change without raising taxes", it's kinda hard for the other side to win with the slogan of "we'll do the same thing that the other guy says---and raise your taxes too!"

The problem is that environmental issues---as "wicked problem"---aren't questions of "either/or", but rather "better/worse". How much environmental destruction are you willing to put up with in order to keep our taxes from going up? And during elections no one gets points for being specific about how much pain they are willing to inflict on voters. 

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Who's going to pay? Polish bagpiper,
photo by Jan Mehlich via Wiki Commons

I get just as tired of writing these pleas for people to subscribe to the "Back-Grounder" as you probably do reading them. But I keep doing it because as the news economy keeps changing it's important for there to be a direct connection between the people who read it and the people who write it. Instead, people have gotten used to large corporations doing all the work of organizing and paying for news as an advertising medium. Well, as we were taught as children "He who pays the piper gets to call the tune". If you pay directly for the news, you get to call the tune. If you don't, well then you get whatever the advertisers want you to hear. If you like what I write---and you can afford it---share the links and some coin, c/o Patreon or the Tip Jar. 

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Beyond the question of conflicting agendas, another problem with anything to do with the environment---including the Community Energy Initiative and District Energy---is that the problem you are solving is never done. It just goes on and on as your society plays "whack a mole". Smog, phosphates, DDT, the ozone hole, plastics, exotic species, climate change, etc, etc. It never ends. It takes a long time to get results. And things never seem to get back to being as good as they used to be, no matter what you do. This means that the everyone involved is vulnerable to something comparable to compassion fatigue. Eventually many voters, politicians, and, bureaucrats simply want a "holiday" from having to deal with something that just makes their job more difficult without adding any tangible, short-term benefit to their life. (Nobody ever got a pay raise or more votes because they prevented a tiny fraction of one degree rise in global temperatures 100 years in the future.)

And of all the solutions that you try to put forward, only a few are able to get past all the competing agendas. And most are exceptionally easy to sabotage. As I pointed out in my solid waste articles, business groups moved heaven and earth to sabotage the tire recycling fee, the eco-fee program, the product stewardship councils, and, even municipal recycling and composting programs. And, of course, Doug Ford simply decided to tear up the cap-and-trade system that the governments of Ontario, Quebec, and, California had negotiated to put a price on carbon. Doesn't it make perfect sense to call the problem that can never really be finally solved "wicked"?

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One really important thing I want readers to come away with is the idea that the problem is wicked, not the individuals who are involved in it. I've been paying attention to Guelph Council for a long time and I don't think that any of the individuals involved were "wicked" people. Instead, I see them as folks who have brought a specific way of looking at the world to their jobs. And I see some of these viewpoints as being relatively better or worse at understanding what is happening to our city and the world it inhabits. My personal understanding is that much of it is profoundly wrong-headed, but I don't think that this makes the people involved evil, just "wrong-headed". And the only way I can think about how to improve things is to try to enter the conversation and try to suggest a more clear and precise way of looking at things. This may result in some politicians or bureaucrats changing their minds. It might also result in some voters changing which people they support during elections.

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Furthermore, I say to you---climate change must be dealt with!

Guelph's Community Energy Initiative: District Energy

In my previous article about the Community Energy Initiative I outlined the basic economic case for the project on strictly theoretical grounds. Now I'm going to discuss one particular type of project, the district energy plant.

"District energy" is a fairly simple idea, it's that it is more efficient to build a big heating and cooling system for several buildings than it is to install small units in each separate one. It manifests this efficiency in two ways. First, there is just the basic principle of taking advantage of what economists call "economies of scale".  This doesn't just involve saving money---large, centralized facilities can also afford to install better pollution abatement equipment. Secondly, in a large facility there is the opportunity to use the waste heat from specific industrial processes to do other things instead of simply letting it dissipate into the surrounding environment.

District Energy System, Graphic from City of Guelph District Energy Strategic Plan

As far as I know, Guelph has four district energy systems. One has been at the University since the 1960s.

The Recently-Installed Cool Water Storage Tank for the University
District Energy System. Image used under "Fair Use Provision",
From a University Promotional Website

In addition, Polycon (a division of Magna) in Guelph installed a 7 megawatt physical plant in 2015.

Polycon's Combined Electricity and Heat Plant at 65 Independence Place, Guelph
Image used under "Fair Use Provision" of Copyright Act
Photo from the Ellis Don website

These two images raise an important point that readers should understand. There is a certain "fluidity" to district energy projects in that they can take many different forms, follow very different business models, and, do very different things. In the Polycon example, the plant is a "Behind the Meter" electricity generator. This means that it doesn't sell any of the electricity it produces to Ontario's Independent Electrical System Operator (IESO). (This is the crown corporation that manages the electricity spot market in Ontario.) "Waste" heat left over from generating electricity is then used in the Polycon plant. The university system, in contrast, primarily provides both winter heating and summer air conditioning on campus. The tank in the above picture is part of a giant "heat sink" that allows the university to use the difference in temperatures from day to day and day to night, to save energy in it's chilled water air conditioning plant.

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A second element of a District Energy project involves ownership. The Polycon and University examples are very simple to understand. They are both very big institutions who own their facilities outright and use them exclusively to service their own buildings. In contrast, the Corporation of Guelph owns two systems that are supposed to provide heating and cooling to a wide variety of individual customers who choose to enter into long-term contracts with the city.

One of them is downtown and is situated in the downtown arena (the "Sleeman Centre".) It provides heat and cooling for the arena, the auditorium across Woolwich (the "River Run Centre"), and, the condo tower (the "River Mill" building) built by the Tricar Group.

Here's a promotional map from Tricar that shows where the location of customers
for the downtown district energy system. Image from Tricar, "Fair Use" provision.

A second facility exists in the Hanlon Creek Business Park. It's customers are an office building owned by "M F Property Management" and a warehouse for Wurth Canada. Originally it provided electricity which was sold onto the grid through the Independent Electrical System Operator (IESO), but once the city decided to walk away from district energy, the plant was downgraded to one that just provides heat to its two customers.

The original Hanlon Creek Business Park district energy system---including electricity generation.
Image from the Ellis Don website, used under the "fair use" provision of the Copyright law.

The Current Halon Creek Business Park district energy hub. Doesn't look all that different to me---.
Photo by Bill Hulet with help from Dr. Tim Allman. 

The Hanlon Creek Business Park with the two customers and the district
energy plant locations. Original Guelph promotional map with labels added
by Bill Hulet.

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As I mentioned in my previous article on the Community Energy Initiative, one of the key "products" that a municipal government offers to the community is planning and co-ordination. Traditionally this involved providing things like the police, the fire department, roads, potable water, sewage treatment, planning, etc. By doing so, it allows home owners and business people the opportunity to focus on their own particular activities without having to worry about finding a way to get all of these essential supports. And, because the city government provides them for everyone, it means that we get the advantages of scale, uniform standards, and, predictability that make all the difference between organization and chaos. Seen from this point of view, providing heating and cooling as a municipal service can be seen as simply the same sort of thing as piping in drinking water and piping out sewage. Some large institutions---like Polycon and the University---are so big that already can have economies of scale. This means that they don't have to have an outside organizing body (ie:  the city) co-ordinating the provision of heating and cooling. In contrast, "small potatoes" like Tricar, Wurth Canada, and, M. F. Property Management aren't big enough to warrant creating their own system.

This is why the city---under the auspices of the Community Energy Initiative---decided to build the two district energy systems: one downtown and the other in the Hanlon Creek Business Park. There are two obvious questions raised by this, however: "Why did the city do this instead of getting a private business to do it?", and, "Why haven't they been as successful as promised?"

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Enwave steam plant and smoke stack viewed
from Pearl and Simcoe Street, Toronto.
Photo by Saud, c/o Wiki Commons

The first thing to understand is that district energy systems need to be understood on a case-by-case basis because each situation is very different. To give one example, the "Enwave" district heating and cooling system in downtown Toronto takes advantage of the cold water deep in Lake Ontario to provide chilled water during hot summer days. This creates tremendous efficiences when compared to conventional air conditioning systems. It also helps that the downtown is going through a building boom which means that there are a lot of new buildings that have not already invested in heating and cooling infrastructure---which makes signing up for a district energy system a lot more attractive.

Having said the above, there are a few general things about district energy systems that can be said. They do tend to be more efficient than each individual building having it's own heating and air conditioning systems. But they are rather capital intensive, and the rates of returns aren't so high that they can quickly pay off investments. Consider the following figures that come from a paper by Hans-Holger Rogner in a 1993 Paper in Energy Studies Review. What these numbers compare are the figures just for heating (not air conditioning---like Enwave's system, or, dual electricity generation and heat---like Polycon.) Also, the percentage is a comparison between the heat created by burning natural gas versus the heat available to be used by the customer.

• Average new gas-fueled individual building furnace technology: 61.4%
• Best available gas-fueled individual building furnace technology: 65.9%
• District heating based on centralized boilers: 71.3%
• Combined Heat and Electricity using natural gas turbines with heat recovery for district heat: 87.5%

Looking the above, you can see that there is only a 8% improvement in efficiency (ie: [71.3 - 65.9] / 65.9) when you switch from the best available individual furnace technology  to a centralized boiler (like at the university and downtown systems.)  If I do the same calculation with combined heat and electricity (like at Polycon and the original Hanlon Creek Industrial Park site), the efficiency is a much more respectable 33%.

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I admit that I can be quite pushy about trying to get people to support the "Guelph-Back-Grounder". It is important to understand, however, how much of a disadvantage this news source labours under. Unlike the vast majority of blogs, it is devoted to local news. And that makes a huge difference! If I were writing on subjects of international or even national interest I would have a pool of potential subscribers that would number in the millions. That means that even if I were able to get a tiny fraction of one percent of them as subscribers I'd have a very successful publication. But because I've decided to report local news, I'm limited to a maximum total of about 100,000 subscribers. This means that for local indie news to be a viable business model people are going to have to accept that it will require a higher percentage of paid subscribers and cost more per person than a national or international source. 

If you want local news that isn't just click bait people are going to have to pay for it. So how about ponying up as little as a buck a month for the "Back-Grounder"? It's easy to do on Patreon. You can also toss money in the Tip Jar if you don't want to make a long term commitment. 

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Please remember that the above numbers refer only to comparative energy efficiency for heating alone. When we are talking about this sort of thing we also have to take into account two other very important issues:  the cost of energy, and, the cost of borrowing money. As near as I can tell, Guelph started to become serious about developing district energy in 2011, so it would be useful to look at changes in both natural gas prices and the cost of borrowing money since then.

First, here's an average yearly natural gas price from Union Gas as quoted by the Ontario Energy Board.

• 2011:  13.3 cents per cubic metre
• 2012:  9.4 cents
• 2013: 10.9 cents
• 2014: 19.4 cents
• 2015: 13.1 cents
• 2016: 9.8 cents
• 2017: 17.6 cents
• 2018: 15 cents
• 2019: 18 cents

Looking at these numbers, you can see that the price of natural gas has gone from a low of 9.4 cents per cubic metre to 19.4 cents: a change of 106%! What this tells me is that the "noise" from fluctuating gas prices (106%) can hide the savings from district energy (8 to 33%). (Please note that I wrote "hide" not "make irrelevant"---the energy price is going to go up even if you don't invest in district energy.)

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As I mentioned before, district energy systems are very capital intensive. The two systems that Guelph installed cost about $14 million, which isn't a huge price when you consider that if they ran at full capacity they would probably be able to replace more than that in the price of installed physical plant in customer's buildings. (I'm told that combined heating and air conditioning plants in a large condo tower can cost about $1 million.)

But there is a complexity to large human habitations in that it is possible for developers to push the costs of heating and cooling onto the final occupants in a building. For example, it was very common at one time for builders to simply install electric baseboard heaters with separate electrical hook-ups in apartments, which meant that each renter could be charged independently for heating through their electricity bills. I understand that even when more cost-effective systems are used (for example using combination air conditioning and air source heat pumps, or, through radiators attached to a water heater), some condominiums have separate systems installed per unit. In a city where there is a tremendous shortage of housing, like Guelph, where prices have increased by 200 to 300% since 2001, there is precious little incentive for developers to compete with each other on the basis of saving condo buyers or renters money either in initial investment in their own power plants or in long-term operating costs. 

Another complexity comes from realizing that there is more than one place that a capital investment can increase energy efficiency. The figures from Rogner's paper refer to efficiency of physical plant, but there are also important efficiencies that can come from the end use. For example, there are significant savings that can come from things like insulation and tightening up leaks in the building envelope. If you are only working with an 8% increase in efficiency from a District Energy system, then perhaps a better "bang for the buck" would involve increasing the amount of insulation and quality of windows installed in an apartment or condominium tower.

Just to make the evaluation of district energy even more complicated, recent prime interest rates have been at historic lows---averaging between 3% and 3.95%. It's important to understand that this is the lowest that the prime rate has been at since before the Second World War. This means that while it is true that district energy systems are very capital intensive, we are living at a time when capital costs are the lowest they've been in generations. If it only costs 4% to borrow money that will result in an 8% cost saving, it sounds pretty good. But it's important to understand that while efficiency and the cost of borrowing money need to be connected when planning investments in energy efficiency, they are fundamentally a question of "apples and oranges". If the 8% savings in energy amounts of $20 because of the low cost of natural gas, and you have to invest $10 million to save it because the technology is so capital intensive---well, 4% equals $400,000 so you do the math. ;-) On the other hand, if the 8% savings come to $10,000 a year and you only have to invest $20,000 to save that much, then the 4% interest comes to only $800/year---which means that it's a great deal. These are just hypothetical numbers, but I include them to point out the importance of remembering that the calculus involved in setting up a district energy system is really complex and involves numbers that fluctuate for unpredictable reasons---which is why I suspect most private business owners have been loathe to invest in starting them from scratch. 

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And don't forget the fact that district energy systems involve two things that fall directly under municipal governance: planning and utilities. City planning departments decide whether or not a specific project can be built in a specific place. District energy projects work best with new builds simply because if you are building a tower from the ground up you can save money if you don't have to build an expensive heating and cooling system. In contrast, if you already have an existing building, you've already spent the money to provide heat and air conditioning yourself. If you are a private business that is trying to make a profit off district energy, you have to know that the city is committed to letting developers build the sort of buildings that will sign on as customers.

Secondly, the pipes that connect your heating and cooling facility to new customers are going to be put under the roads. And the process of putting them there is going to be really disruptive to traffic and really expensive. (One of the reasons that Fusion Homes---the condos at the old W. C. Woods site---said that they didn't sign up for the downtown system was the extreme cost of running pipes past the Speed River.) Since the city owns the roads, they are both the experts on doing this sort of thing and the final arbitrar about what does and does not get done.

The diversity of factors determining the economics is further augmented by the fact that the distribution infrastructure of district energy systems is inherently capital intensive with payback periods resembling those in the utility sector. Consequently, utilities are best suited to own and operate district energy systems. (from Rogner's 1993 paper) 

And don't forget the issues that I raised in my first article on this subject. Any increase in the efficiency of any physical plant in the city of Guelph is going to raise the productivity of the city, which will free up money to either be harvested as profits to be reinvested or as wages to circulate through local economy. In addition, a dollar saved through efficiency is a dollar that will not leak out to the company that is providing fossil fuels from out of province or even out of country.

And if all this isn't enough to make your head spin, don't forget that increases in efficiency also have a value in a world where it's government policy to put a price on carbon. Under a cap-and-trade system increased carbon efficiencies can be sold for profit on the emissions market. Moreover, when government programs exist that subsidize capital investment in efficiency, a district energy system can apply for grants from other levels of government. For example, Guelph received a $145,750 grant from the Green Municipal Fund to do the initial research for the municipal district energy project. (And, I might point out the this grant was given under the Stephen Harper government with the then Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt doing the photo op.)

So to sum up, there is a case for developing municipal district energy systems. But the math is extremely complicated and based on a variety of important variables. This doesn't mean, however, that district energy system cannot be profitable, or that private businesses will not buy into them---just that they seem to something that businesses will only invest in after municipal utilities set them up and "prove the concept".

Logo used under the "Fair Use" provision,
Image c/o Wiki Commons.

Take the example of the downtown Toronto Enwave district power system. It started out as being the Ontario-government owned power plant for a cluster of downtown Toronto hospitals:  Toronto General Hospital, the Hospital for Sick Children, New Mount Sinai Hospital and Women's College Hospital. Later on, buildings in the University of Toronto and Ontario government were added. In 1998---under the Mike Harris government---it was "privatized" and ended up with shares going to the four founding hospitals, the city of Toronto, the Ontario government, and, the U. of Toronto. After various sales, the city ended up owning 47% of the shares and OMERS (the municipal employees pension fund) the other 57%. In 2012 it was announced that the entire company was sold to "Brookfied Asset Management Inc"---which means that it is now completely privately owned.

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This is the point where I think I need to stop and break the story into two parts. City Council decided that the district energy hubs were a financial failure and decided to put the project "on ice". Since describing this is a very different process than outlining the back ground, I'm going to make that the focus of another installment. 

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Furthermore, I say to you---climate change must be dealt with!