Renewable Energy 34 (2009) 727–730

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Renewable Energy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/renene

The use of deep water cooling systems: Two Canadian examples

Lenore Newman a, *, Yuill Herbert b
a
School of Environment and Sustainability, Royal Roads University, Victoria, Canada
b
Sustainability Solutions Group, 11 Alex Cox Road, Tatamagouche NS B0K1V0, Canada

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Deep water cooling involves using naturally cold water as a heat sink in a heat exchange system,
Received 23 April 2007 eliminating the need for conventional air conditioning. The cold water is drawn from near the bottom or
Accepted 25 April 2008 below the thermocline of a nearby water body. In this study Canadian deep water cooling systems in
Available online 7 July 2008
Halifax, Nova Scotia and Toronto, Ontario were documented. The expected economic and environmental
benefits were realized, but barriers to large-scale adoption of the technology were apparent. This
Keywords: technology requires that a client with a large cooling need is near a deep, cold body of water, and
Deep water cooling
payback times vary depending on the site. The public–private partnership approach proved to be ben-
Demand displacement
Niche accumulation
eficial in these two examples, and the Toronto approach in which many buildings are serviced at once by
Sustainable development combining municipal pumping capacity can deliver cost savings on a shorter time span. Deep water
cooling represents a successful example of a niche accumulation process and an example of electricity
demand displacement. Many other locations in which heavy air conditioning users are located next to
deep, cold water bodies could use this technology; several such sites exist in Canadian urban areas.
Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction use, help to dampen fluctuations in electricity demand, and reduce

In many areas of the world, air conditioning imposes a signifi-
cant load on local electrical systems. Air conditioning is required
even in temperate areas as technologies such as lighting and
electronic equipment produce significant indoor waste heat that
must be compensated by cooling systems. Cooling can create
a particularly troublesome electricity load as it is thermodynami-
cally more difficult than heating and demand is intermittent; air
conditioning demand can trigger summer brownouts and voltage
drops on hot summer afternoons, for example, as the highest
demand for cooling often occurs at the same time of day as other
demands peak as well. This intermittent load is of particular con-
cern for those advocating a shift to an energy grid supplied by
renewable energy, as cooling demand tends to be highest at times
when there is little wind energy available and when conflicting
water needs might limit hydroelectric output. The availability of
solar power, of course, peaks at the times when cooling demand is
highest, but in Northern climates solar is not yet a widely used
option due to poor payback potential [1]. Air conditioning currently
consumes as much as 18% of electrical output in some US markets
[2]; any technologies that can considerably lower the energy de-
mand of air conditioning will create a significant drop in electrical
* Corresponding author. Present address: Apartment 5, 234 Frank Street, Ottawa,
Ontario K2P 0X6, Canada. Tel.: þ1 613 230 5475.
E-mail address: lenore.newman@royalroads.ca (L. Newman).
the associated environmental concerns of greenhouse gas emis-
sions and local air pollution.
Conventional air conditioning functions by transferring heat
from the air to a chilled medium, and then uses a compressor,
motor, and refrigerant to transfer the heat from the chiller medium
to the outdoors. If it is warmer outside than inside, heat must be
transferred from a cooler to a warmer medium, a very energy
intensive operation. Highly significant energy savings can be ach-
ieved if the heat can instead be transferred to a mass of cooler
material with a high capacity for absorbing heat such as water. The
need for a compressor-based cooling cycle is eliminated. Water is
not only a good heat sink due to its very high specific heat capacity;
as water’s density rises as it cools many bodies of water have large
cool masses of water at their lower depths. A permanent reservoir
of cold water is created below a certain depth, known as the
hypolimnion.
One of the simplest ways to utilize this large heat sink involves
pumping a flow of hypolimnion water to the surface and using it as
a heat sink. Water is pumped from the water body and into a heat
exchange unit where it comes into contact with a closed cooling
loop. The heat exchanger takes the place of the traditional ‘‘chiller’’
or air conditioner. Energy savings of up to 90% over conventional air
conditioning can be achieved, depending on how the system
operates. The system requires only the energy to run the pumps
and the fans that blow air over the cooling loops. The technology is
simple and certainly not new; however, the availability of cheap
electricity has presented a significant barrier to implementation.

0960-1481/$ – see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.renene.2008.04.022
728 L. Newman, Y. Herbert / Renewable Energy 34 (2009) 727–730
However, increasing interest in reducing environmental impact,
particularly in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, paired with the
threat of unpredictable and rising energy prices, is making deep
water cooling more attractive as an option.
This case study of deep water cooling was conducted as part of
a larger study, Sustainable Infrastructure: Implications for Canada’s
Future, which was jointly funded by Infrastructure Canada and the
Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Over the
course of this project we investigated innovative community-level
sustainable development projects in areas such as energy, trans-
portation, and waste disposal. In general we found that successful
projects thrived due to ‘‘niche exploitation’’; local conditions were
such that barriers to adoption could be overcome. As explained
below, the deep water cooling cases relied on local geography,
support from various levels of government, and developers will to
take on risk to showcase an innovative technology.
2. The case studies
In the following sections two case studies are examined. The
first, a medium scale saltwater cooling system in Halifax, Canada,
was constructed in 1986, and is one of the oldest deep water
cooling systems in operation. The second, a large-scale network in
Toronto, Canada, began operation in 2004 and continues to expand.
These projects provide an interesting set of complimentary and
contrasting features. They differ in scale, one uses saltwater and the
other lake water, and one was constructed by a developer to serve
one building complex and the other was constructed by a company
that provides cooling as a service to multiple sites. However, both
projects involve public–private partnerships, and both were and
are successful economically and in terms of electrical demand
displacement.
2.1. Case study one: Purdy’s wharf, Halifax
The Purdy’s wharf office complex sits on the waterfront of
Halifax, and the buildings extend out over the harbour on pilings.
Cold seawater is drawn from the bottom of the harbour through
a pipe to a titanium heat exchanger in the basement of the complex.
There the buildings closed loop of cooling water is cooled by the
seawater, and it is then pumped to each floor of the building where
fans blow air over the cooling pipes to cool the air. The seawater is
returned to the harbour floor. The project was jointly funded by the
government of Canada and the building’s developer, and was
intended to serve as a demonstration of the technology. The project
was constructed from 1983 to 1989 and consists of an 18-story
tower, a 22-story tower, and a 4-story retail centre. The total area
cooled by the system is 65,000 m2.
The Purdy’s wharf project was funded jointly as a demonstration
project by the development company, JW Lindsay Enterprises
Limited, and the federal government. The seawater cooling system
was a $400,000 (all costs in Canadian $ as paid at time of con-
struction) upgrade over a conventional cooling system, primarily
due to expensive titanium heat exchangers. While the cold ocean
water is freely available, pumping costs to bring the water into the
building cost $30,000 per year. Other operational costs include
cathodic protection of the saltwater intake at $3500 per year for
copper bars. Estimated annual savings, however, total $177,350 in
reduced electricity load, building maintenance and operation load
with respect to a conventional air conditioning system. The simple
payback was estimated to be 2.3 years. The system cannot function
year round due to fluctuating harbour temperatures; this was un-
derstood at the time of construction. Since construction, Purdy’s
wharf has demonstrated that deep water cooling systems can
provide financial benefits even when they cannot operate year
round.
Purdy’s wharf did require innovative technologies in order to
mitigate the corrosive power of seawater. Piping is corrosion
resistant polyvinyl and polystyrene. The pumps are made of
stainless steel. One of the obstacles to this project was control of
marine growth. Initially chlorine was used to prevent marine
growth in the system, but this was both costly and potentially
environmentally damaging. That system was replaced by cathodic
protection provided by copper plates.
To provide the required cooling performance, the water tem-
perature must be below 10  C. The intake for the pumping system is
located less than 200 m offshore at a depth of 18 m where condi-
tions are appropriate for cooling for 10.5 months a year. Purdy’s
wharf operates conventional chillers in the late summer when
harbour temperatures are too high. Mapping of the harbour water
temperature column was provided by the Bedford Institute of
Oceanography and the Fisheries and Oceans Research Lab.
2.2. Case study two: Enwave, Toronto
Enwave’s Deep Lake Water Cooling project is a much larger
project than the Purdy’s wharf initiative. Pipes extend 5 km into
Lake Ontario and draw water from a depth of 83 m to the John
Street pumping station where heat exchangers cool Enwave’s
closed cooling loop that snakes through downtown Toronto. The
lake water, slightly warmed, then goes on to supply Toronto with
drinking water. This sharing of drinking water and cooling saves
pumping water out of the lake twice, and the new deeper water
intake solved the problem of algae blooms tainting Toronto’s water
in the summer. The idea of providing cooling to Toronto using lake
water had been considered at various times, but the project began
in earnest in 2002 [3]. As of June 2006, 46 buildings were signed to
the system and 27 were already connected [4]. As the system nears
capacity energy savings will be 85 million kWh, for a CO2 reduction
of 79,000 tonnes annually, or the equivalent of 15,800 cars. The
total cooling load will be 3,200,000 m2, or 50 times the area of the
Purdy’s wharf development. Sixty-one percent of this capacity has
been sold [4]. There is some discussion of expanding the system
once capacity is reached. Energy savings are about 90%, and as the
required cold water is available all year round the need for sup-
plementary chilling is eliminated. The project is owned jointly; 57%
by the municipal pension fund and 43% by the city of Toronto, and is
thus an example of a public–private partnership.
The total cost of the Enwave project in Toronto was over $235
million, including $175 million in capital costs and $55 million for
a new city water intake (the system extracts the cold from incoming
city water). The project was funded through a mix of share capital
and debt financing and is a long term, but profitable investment. In
2005, the deep lake cooling system was operating at 51% of planned
capacity but was still generating sufficient cash flow to cover its
operating and financial costs and a lender therefore predicted that
continued growth in the company’s profitability is highly predict-
able and from the customer’s perspective connecting to the deep
water cooling system is advantageous, as illustrated by the case of
Toronto City Hall. The air conditioning capital costs required to tap
into Enwave’s system were estimated at $2.5 million as compared
to $3.1 million for a conventional system, with additional operating
cost savings of $100,000 per year [4].
Enwave’s system uses one-tenth of the electricity of a standard
air conditioning system, freeing up 61 MW of electricity from
Ontario’s electricity grid during peak period. This savings avoids
emissions totaling 79,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide and reduces the
need for water for cooling towers by 714 million litres of water [5].
Capital costs continue as the urban pipeline network expands. The
project was a public–private partnership; 33 million dollars came
from the City of Toronto’s pipe repair fund [6], a move that was not
without controversy. The Federal government provided low
 L. Newman, Y. Herbert / Renewable Energy 34 (2009) 727–730
interest loans, and Toronto Hydro also provided incentives for
companies to hook their buildings up to the system in order to
overcome the high initial capital cost. Kevin Loughborough of
Enwave commented on the up-front costs:
‘‘The payback on the project requires a patient investor. It can be
compared to a hydroelectric dam project in that it is capital
intensive at the front end but costs very little to operate over the
long term.’’ (Loughborough, personal communication)
3. Project successes and barriers
Success in both case hinged upon the private–public partnership
model. This model provided a way to overcome the high up-front
costs associated with this technology. As noted by Vermeulen and
Hovens [7], subsidies can greatly speed the adoption of young
innovations. As explored by Dormois et al. [8], public–private
partnerships use a ‘‘lever-effect’’ to kick-start private innovation
using public money. The involvement of government also eases the
fear that zoning and bylaw issues will make adoption of an
innovation impossible. In this way public–private partnerships
spread risk [9], opening up niches that might not have been viable
environments of an innovation otherwise.
In the Toronto case study, what really pushed the project for-
ward was the pairing of deep water cooling and deeper water
intakes for the drinking water supply. In effect two giant projects
were combined into one, a good use of holistic planning processes
that differed quite a bit from more traditional planning processes
where different infrastructure needs are considered separately.
Kevin Loughborough of Enwave reported that this is the first such
combination of uses with this technology. Toronto’s success was
also supported by the establishment of Enwave as a ‘‘middleman’’;
individual developers didn’t have to install the infrastructure, they
just had to make the choice to hook into the cooling network. The
Purdy’s wharf project went forward because the developer in
question was willing to take a risk on fairly new technology. The
Toronto project was much larger, and succeeded as it had support
from individuals in government and in business. These ‘‘cham-
pions’’ worked together to maneuver the project through various
hurdles. This agrees with the findings of Vermeulen and Hovens [7],
who note that the opinion of decision makers greatly influences
whether or not an innovation is adopted.
Both of these projects achieved their goal of drastically lowering
energy use. Economies of scale seem to be applicable here as well;
larger projects might be more practical as a bigger cooling load can
be displaced with a similar initial infrastructure layout. Each
building that hooks onto the Enwave system lowers the cost per
displaced kWh. The larger and newer project in Toronto has
attracted more attention partly due to its location in a city expe-
riencing significant smog problems and electricity shortages, and it
continues to expand. Purdy’s wharf, however, does demonstrate
that the technology can work on a smaller scale in certain
situations.
Purdy’s wharf did not cause widespread adoption of the tech-
nology even though it was a successful project. Contributing factors
could include the low cost of energy at the time and a lack of
comparable projects, as it was one of the first in the world. Also,
a developer wanting to mimic Purdy’s wharf would have to start
from scratch as the infrastructure has capacity for one development
only. To a degree, the technology was at least temporary stuck
within its narrow niche, a pitfall identified by Raven [10]. Others
agree this is as not unusal; Dieperink et al. [11] found that energy
technologies take 5–10 years to spread. It has been rightly
remarked that the transition to sustainable development is
alarmingly slow [12], partly due to the magnitude of the changes
required. One could say that deep water cooling has now hit
729
a ‘‘critical mass’’ of sorts with several large projects in the planning
phase, including projects in Hawaii and the Persian Gulf. Kevin
Loughborough says that the main factor in a successful deep water
cooling project is ‘‘geography’’. ‘‘The key ingredients for the project
are a high density cooling cluster located near a renewable cooling
resource.’’ (Loughborough, personal communication).
4. Discussion
Deep water cooling is an interesting example of niche exploi-
tation and ‘‘niche accumulation’’ which refers to the adoption of
new technologies within specific sets of environments or circum-
stances in which they enjoy an advantage due to local conditions,
allowing them to spread to other similar niches. Technical niches
protect new technologies from early rejection [10]. In this case the
Halifax deep water cooling project was constructed in a location
with an unusually cold body of water immediately adjacent to the
site. Such early adoption gives an opportunity for proper govern-
ment policy and bylaw design to occur, and as Raven [10] points
out, this can lead to niche branching in which the technology
spreads to a larger, less specialized niche. In this case, the Toronto
example is a large-scale project that also relies on specific local
conditions to be successful; the Toronto example was partially
inspired by the success of the Halifax example.
Using deep water cooling and heating to offset electrical
demand is significant for two key reasons; firstly it offsets expen-
sive, fossil fuel dependent, peak demand generation and secondly,
the use of electricity for heating and cooling is inefficient and costly.
Electricity as a commodity has the unusual characteristic of
being extremely difficult and expensive to store. The supply of
electricity must be flexible to meet highly variable real time
demand. Grids maintain this flexibility at a range of timescales; in
the short term increasing the generation rate of online base load
capacity and in the longer term by starting up reserve generating
capacity. The decisions regarding which generating capacity to use
at which point is highly complex, influenced by other factors,
operating costs and start-up and shut-down time requirements.
Energy managers typically use the lowest cost generating capacity
for the base load and draw on more expensive capacity for peaks,
either running plants above the optimal rate or dispatching plants
using higher cost fuels, depending on the timescale of the peak.
Typically, utilities maintain peak generation capacity equal to base
load capacity.
Peak generation capacity is, with current technologies, fossil
fuel dependent, the one exception being utilities that can draw on
significant hydroelectric capacity. Renewable energy technologies
such as tidal, wind and solar generation are intermittent as output
varies with environmental conditions over which the operator has
no control, and therefore can be used only to offset base load
generation. For this reason, offsetting peak demand using deep
water heating or cooling is significant for reducing greenhouse gas
emissions. Jaccard [13] notes the variability of electricity demand as
one of the central obstacles to wider use of renewable sources. Any
technology that reduces peak demand helps to reduce this
problem.
A niche exists for technologies such as deep water cooling due to
the relatively high cost of cooling with electricity. Though elec-
tricity costs in North America are still low, cooling is significantly
more expensive than heating, which can be accomplished with the
direct burning of fossil fuels. Builders and property managers are
thus open to possible methods of reducing cooling costs. The
overall impact on electrical use is also greater due to transmission
line losses and inefficiencies resulting from the conversion of fuel
into electricity. A diversity of localized energy sources provides
security and avoids transmission losses [14]. The slow adoption of
technologies such as deep water cooling is partly a historical
730 L. Newman, Y. Herbert / Renewable Energy 34 (2009) 727–730
aversion to the risks posed by new technologies. As Verbruggan
[15] notes, the history of energy use in industrialized nations has
been one of neglecting or rejecting free energy from the sun or the
environment. One of the theoretical barriers to future expansion is
what Gregory Unruh calls ‘‘carbon lock-in’’ [16], as energy tech-
nologies have co-evolved to require carbon based fuel, there is an
increasing return on investment that favours large-scale technol-
ogies and discourages the diffusion of non-carbon options even if
they are economically sound.
Though the impact of deep water cooling is overwhelmingly
positive, there has been some worry that the cold water source
could experience ‘‘heat pollution’’ if overused. Such pollution could
have a negative effect on habitat and species composition. In the
ocean, such effects might occur on the local level, but the amount of
heat involved is too small to have a large-scale effect. Lakes are
another matter; a study of Lake Ontario estimated that up to
20,000 m3/s of water could be withdrawn from the lake and used
for cooling without changing the lake’s physical properties [17]. For
the Great Lakes the maximum draw amount is very large, but this
number will be lower for smaller lakes, and must be taken into
account when discussing the sustainability of deep water cooling
using lake water. In the case of the Toronto example, the water
withdrawn is then used for municipal use, and re-enters the lake in
a diffuse manner as treated sewage or as run-off. In the case of
Halifax harbour, the environment in question is already greatly
altered from its original condition. The projects discussed had to
follow established procedure for construction in coastal area, but
long-term effects might differ greatly from place to place and it is
likely that some locations should be rejected due to potential
damage due to heat pollution.
5. Conclusions
The successful demonstration of deep water cooling technology
in Halifax and Toronto could encourage the spread of this tech-
nology to other viable ‘‘niches’’. The potential for expanded use of
deep water cooling in Canada and the world is quite large. Both
Halifax and Toronto could greatly increase their use of this tech-
nology without creating a serious environmental hazard. Several
other major Canadian cities are located near deep, cold water, and
there are hundreds of smaller centres located next to deep bodies of
cold water that could also utilize this form of cooling. The Toronto
project found a way to greatly reduce costs by combining their
needs with that of the municipal water supply; this technique could
be repeated in other areas near a major freshwater body. The
technology needs of saltwater installations will remain more
complex due to the more difficult environment seawater poses, but
the number of potential near-ocean locations is much larger than
that of freshwater sites. These cases also demonstrated the poten-
tial of public–private partnerships to encourage adoption of new
sustainable development innovations.
Acknowledgements
The research described in this paper was funded by
Infrastructure Canada and the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).
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