Key takeaways:
- Premier states it’s like taking anywhere from 6,000 to 9,000 vehicles off the street.
- Politicians declared Friday that the local and national governments would fund an electrification project at Memorial University.
There are goals to lower Memorial University’s greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 30,000 tonnes with a new grant for an electrification project.
The regional and national governments will pay almost $10.5 million to clear one fuel oil-fired hot water boiler and substitute it with two electric boilers.
“What we’re doing is exactly what we’ve done in people’s homes or proposed to do. We’re taking Memorial off oil and putting them on electricity,” said Premier Andrew Furey.
Furey said the change would take approximately six to nine thousand vehicles off the road.
The electrical boilers and the three remaining oil boilers will help the entire St. John’s campus, the Health Sciences Complex, the new Core Science building, and the coming Adult Mental Health Facility.
The money was financed through Newfoundland and Labrador’s weather change challenge fund, an application-based funding program created to enable businesses, industry, municipalities, Indigenous organizations to undertake greenhouse gas reduction projects.
Read more: N.L.ers in House of Commons will go on to oppose for Bay du Nord
That fund is backed by almost $33 million through a national low-carbon budget.
Seamus O’Regan, MP for St. John’s South, said there would be various ways to take when getting to net zero, but pointing out the challenges and barriers is a natural reply.
“It’s an uncomplicated move substituting boilers, but these retrofits, every one of them, add up,” he said.
“They add to help a clean energy future for this region… and our kids’ future.”
N.L.’s oil and gas
While making the report, Furey also said Newfoundland and Labrador could meet the international demand for “low carbon” oil and gas.
Source – cbc.ca
