Tourism Vancouver program lowers some business Hydro bills
Posted May 28, 2013 9:35 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Tourism Vancouver is working to boost energy efficiency for its more than 1,000 member businesses.
Gwendal Castellan is an energy specialist and did 24 assessments at restaurants, hotels and other businesses. “If they’re interested in trying to reduce their energy costs, then it starts the ball rolling and I start my detective work and try to find where the opportunities are for them.”
He says MCI, a global consulting and event management company, was able to reduce its overall energy consumption.
“We were able to identify ways in which to use lighting controls to reduce the energy consumption in that office and take advantage of natural light,” he explains.
MCI says the assessment highlighted some simple decisions that’s now saving it some money.
Castellan also tells us they the Burrard Hotel had already renovated its rooms, but they were able to find other areas that had been overlooked, like the parkade. “There was an opportunity to upgrade the lighting in that space, and also look at their very old boiler and find opportunities to make that run more efficiently.”
The hotel says it’s planning to replace that boiler, thereby increasing savings even more.
Castallen found 2.7 gigawatt hours of potential energy savings in his first year on the job, which is the equivalent of powering 245 homes for a year.
