Second Round of Ontario Conservation Fund Recipients Announced

Funding supports schools, industry and small business

(Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Sept. 26, 2006) The Ontario Power Authority’s Conservation Fund will provide financial support of over $365,000 to three major initiatives. The initiatives span three sectors in Ontario – schools, industry and business – to run pilot programs in energy efficiency.

The three second-round recipients now join the ranks of 31 other electricity conservation pilots funded since 2005. “These three recipients met all of the criteria of our Fund,” said Peter Love, Ontario’s Chief Energy Conservation Officer. “Projects such as these help us find and develop innovative conservation programs to roll out province-wide in the future.”

For the $2.1 million in funding provided since 2005, the Conservation Fund has leveraged $5 million in contributions from other sources.

The Fund is also calling for applications for the final round of awards for 2006. The application deadline is Friday, November 24, 2006. Complete details of the application criteria, process and other successful projects can be found at www.conservationbureau.on.ca.

The successful projects for the second round of funding are:

• Energy Drill School Program: A demand response pilot led by the Toronto District School Board with the potential for significant electricity savings in eight Toronto-area schools (four from the Toronto District School Board and four from the Toronto Catholic District School Board). The pilot will run from September 2006 to October 2007 and involves the entire school community – teachers, students, parents, administrative and caretaking staff – actively reducing electricity use in their school buildings in times of greatest need (when the price is high, during a power alert or during extreme weather events). This pilot is modeled after fire drills and involves designating an Energy Team and training Energy Marshals in each participating school who will be responsible for taking no-cost actions to reduce electricity use during an Energy Drill. The program idea was first conceived by Milton Hydro and was briefly tested in one Milton school.

• Conservation Through Dialogue and Design: Administered through the Association of Major Power Consumers of Ontario, this pilot consists of a series of focused workshop sessions designed to raise conservation awareness at very senior levels, gather comprehensive data related to industrial electricity users, and generate pertinent, usable analysis and recommendations on conservation activities, opportunities and issue. The project will engage a broad range of industrial electricity users of all sizes, while identifying conservation opportunities, issues, concerns and barriers. Results of the project will include data and analysis that will provide a foundation for future work, beginning with the development of a comprehensive communications and implementation strategy for conservation action programs that will lead to measurable reductions in electricity consumption and improved demand management by industrial customers across the province.

• greenTbiz: A program delivery unit, operated under the auspices of the Toronto Association of Business Improvement Areas (TABIA) that provides programs and services to the Toronto BIAs, for the benefit of its members and the environment. The aim of this delivery unit is to develop and deliver comprehensive energy conservation and environmental programs that address relative concerns and will have both significant benefits and outcomes, while improving the bottom line of the BIA businesses. Within greenTbiz, the Conservation and Technology Fund will support the Smart Mentoring, green Talks and greenAssist programs.

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Barton Sala
Ontario Power Authority/Conservation Bureau
416-969-6009

The Conservation Bureau is an office of the Ontario Power Authority. It was established in 2005 to develop, coordinate and stimulate electricity conservation and demand management by planning, designing, and implementing comprehensive programs that foster a culture of conservation across the province.

The Conservation Fund was established in 2005 to mobilize as many sectors of the Ontario economy as possible to embrace a culture of conservation. The Fund focuses on enabling sector-specific conservation education and electricity reduction pilot projects. The key learning points from each of the Conservation Fund programs will be shared across sectors and across the Province to help spark similar programs in other sectors or to build pilot programs into full-scale initiatives. More details on the Fund can be found at www.conservationbureau.on.ca .

This release was published on openPR.