Ottawa’s Zibi neighbourhood will become the first master-planned community in North America to adopt a post-industrial waste-heat recovery system.

Designed in partnership with Hydro Ottawa and Kruger Products, Zibi’s district energy system will use effluent energy recovery from the nearby Kruger Products' plant to heat buildings on the site, and water from the Ottawa River to cool the buildings.

When the system is completed, all four million square feet of residential and commercial buildings at Zibi will be interconnected through a hydronic loop that will deliver heating and cooling energy. Low-grade heat from effluents will be recovered from the end of the tissue-making process from the neighbouring Kruger Products' Gatineau tissue plant and injected into the new central energy plant. In the summer, heat will be rejected through chillers into the Ottawa River to efficiently produce chilled water to cool the buildings.

The system will create zero carbon emissions.

"The Zibi Community Utility district energy system is a cornerstone in our plans to meet our One Planet sustainability goals,” said Zibi president Jeff Westeinde. “We are grateful to our partners at Hydro Ottawa and Kruger Products for helping us develop an innovative solution that not only enables us to meet our zero-carbon goals but puts Ottawa and Gatineau on the map as leaders in combating climate change."

Zibi is a 34-acre community designed by Dream Unlimited Corp and Theia Partners, and which sprawls across the cities of Gatineau and Ottawa and the islands on the Ottawa River in between. When the community is completed, it will be home to more than 5,000 people. It will contain eight acres of riverside parks and public squares, and more than one million square feet of commercial space.

Zibi has been designed to be one of the most sustainable communities in the world, and the first in Canada to receive One Planet Living certification, a global framework developed by Bioregional and the World Wildlife Fund.

The Zibi Community Utility plant will be housed on the lower level of a 15-storey residential building at the corner of Eddy and Jos-Montferrand in Gatineau, Quebec. That building is currently under construction.

When the plant is completed, it will be accessible to residents and visitors to allow them see the operations and learn about the technology.

"Kruger Products' involvement with the Zibi Community Utility, through effluent energy recovery from our Gatineau Plant, is yet another example of our commitment to our community, our employees, our suppliers and our customers to always look for innovative ways to reduce our environmental footprint and to make our operations more sustainable,” says Stéphane Lamoureux, vice president, operations – special projects at Kruger Products. “As Canada's leading manufacturer and distributor of quality tissue products for household, industrial and commercial use, sustainability is at the core of what we do and as such, we are proud to partner with Zibi and Hydro Ottawa in this promising project, which will have a positive impact in the National Capital Region."

In addition to introducing district energy, Zibi’s partnership with telecom company Beanfield will use the energy system pipe corridors to lay infrastructure for their fibre-optic network and offer 1Gbps symmetrical upload and download speeds delivered over a dedicated fibre connection.