ROADMAP TO NET ZERO INDOOR ICE RINKS
The Roadmap to Net Zero Ice Rinks pilot study was conducted by the Mayors’ Megawatt Challenge program and supported by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. The study took a cohort approach to developing individual roadmap studies for nine municipal ice rinks from seven municipalities to get their building operations to net zero carbon emissions over time.
Roadmap to Net Zero Ice Rinks Study
This study took a cohort approach to developing individual roadmap studies for nine municipal ice rinks from seven municipalities to get their building operations to net zero carbon emissions over time. This report shares the findings and provides recommendations to municipalities doing a similar study.
These municipalities worked together with the pilot team and with leading industry experts to identify how to get existing ice rink facilities to net zero emissions. The pilot used a cohort approach so municipalities could learn from each other and reduce their individual risk. The pilot was designed to incorporate net zero readiness best practices not yet adopted by many of the municipalities. These best practices included early identification of prioritized projects, low carbon design brief, integrated design teams, life cycle costing, capital planning aligned with asset management, and zero-over-time planning.
A feasibility study was developed for each participating rink providing a high-level technical solution to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, including an outline of potential measures and lifecycle financial analysis for each measure in an incremental, over time approach. Solutions were aligned with individual municipal timelines – targets and urgency in getting to net zero, capital renewal timelines and asset management plans. A standard model was developed, based on collective learning from all participating ice rinks, plus generic considerations, to be applied to other ice rinks.
The results of the pilot are conclusive and transformational. Net zero carbon emissions is achievable and financially feasible in municipal ice rinks. It requires an all-encompassing evaluation and plan of measures, employing life cycle costing to account for operations and maintenance costs, and aligns the timing of measures with capital renewal or planned capital investments over time.
This initiative is sponsored by:
We would like to thank our sponsor CIMCO Refrigeration who were critical to helping us, and our participating municipalities, achieve our objectives.
We would also like to thank members of our Technical Committee for their invaluable support. From start to finish, this has been a group effort. We are fortunate to have a technical committee made up some of the leading experts in technology in ice rinks that have generously volunteered hours of their time and lending their expertise to help shape the pilot and develop the measures. They have worked with us to develop the high impact conservation measures for the archetypal rink and actively participated in the preparation integrated design meetings for each individual rink.