Media Advisory

Halifax Regional Municipality - Corporate Energy Benchmarks

(Thursday, March 26, 2009) - During Earth Hour, at 8:30 pm on Saturday, March 28th the Halifax Regional Municipality will join millions of people around the globe to take action on climate change by turning off their lights. In association with this event, HRM has released corporate energy benchmarking data for its capital infrastructure collected between 2002 and 2008. Since 2002, HRM has implemented a detailed corporate benchmarking process for buildings to track and prioritize energy initiatives.

Halifax has recently been ranked the “Best Medium City” in Canada by Corporate Knights magazine, due in part to the Municipality’s dedication to sustainability. In 2008, corporately, HRM spent a total of $8.4 million on energy consumption in buildings. Over the past several years, more than $5 million has been spent on various corporate energy efficiency projects which save the Municipality $750,000 per year in energy costs. New energy efficiency projects and retrofits are ongoing to improve HRM's systems and reduce consumption.

Benchmarking data is often difficult for municipalities to calculate because of their complex organizational structure and variety of unique facilities, which typically include buildings such as rinks, community centers, fire stations and libraries. By sharing energy benchmarks for individual sites in an accessible Excel format online, HRM hopes to encourage other municipalities to follow suit. HRM seeks to lead by example, sharing its approach and findings to serve as a municipal benchmarking resource.

Want to find out how much energy your local community centre uses? The data is available at the following link:

http://www.halifax.ca/environment/CorporateEnergyBenchmarks.html

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Contact:

Jim Brown
Energy Auditor Project Assistant
Phone: (902) 233-2732

Deanna Wilmshurst
Information Officer
Phone: (902) 490-1454