Dear Editor:
Thank you for the opportunity to respond to the Jan. 15 letter to the editor, "LEC Ignores Tomorrow's Creative Solutions."
While a provocative headline, unfortunately, it represents the opposite of the Lonsdale Energy Corporation's direction, mission and achievements, and we are pleased to clarify.
The primary purpose of building an energy network and ensuring that in-building heating systems are designed and built to be compatible with LEC's system, is to ensure that buildings will be heated with the most appropriate source of energy whether it is available currently or in the future.
LEC is very proud of the fact that it can proactively utilize various heating sources and alternate their use with no impact to its customers.
Compared to the alternative of using stand-alone in-building conventional boilers, the use of centralized boilers provides significant energy and emission reductions. In addition to highefficiency condensing natural gas boilers, for the last five years, LEC has been successfully using solar panels located on the roof of the city library to produce heat. For two years, LEC has also been providing cooling services. In this way, LEC can recover and use in its network the heat generated during the cooling process.
In the long-term, LEC envisions reducing the use of natural gas boilers to provide heat during periods of high demand while increasingly using alternative sources of energy to provide for its base load.
LEC is proud of its low rates and has provided in public meetings to its regulator, the City of North Vancouver, significant documentation demonstrating the fact that LEC has one of the lowest rates in the region. LEC's rates are significantly lower than the cost of using electric baseboards or stand-alone in-building boilers.
In fact, LEC has recently successfully applied to its regulator for the permission to increase its rates for the first time in a decade.
The letter stated that LEC discourages the application of individual metering and resource conservation. In fact, LEC encourages both. Developers and users are charged on the basis of their capacity requirement and consumption.
Developers that invest in energy conservation to reduce a building's demand benefit by being charged a lower connection fee.
With regard to individual metering, LEC has made several attempts to have such meters installed. However, at present, both users and developers express concern with the cost of installing and monitoring these devices. LEC remains
hopeful that as the cost of energy increases, the benefits of monitoring individual consumption will outweigh those concerns.
The Lonsdale Energy Corporation continues to receive industry accolades and interest from municipalities across Canada. We appreciate that misunderstandings may arise due to the newness and complexity of district energy, and we are always available to address any concerns or confusion.
LEC enters the new year celebrating its 10th anniversary, and we encourage the community to learn more about the city's award-winning district energy system.
Ben Themens
director, LEC
