Peter Black

Feb. 28, 2024

Local Journalism Initiative reporter

peterblack@qctonline.com

An ambitious plan to provide steam power from the city’s massive incinerator to the new L’Enfant-Jésus super-hospital is on ice.

City officials confirmed the postponement of the project in the face of ballooning costs. Le Soleil initially reported on the cancellation on Feb. 15. A day later, Mayor Bruno Marchand told reporters the estimated cost of the project had more than doubled, from $44 million to $90 million.

The magnitude of the cost increase surfaced in pre-budget discussions in December, according to a follow-up report by Radio-Canada. When it was announced in July 2021, the project cost was to be split roughly evenly between the city and the federal and Quebec governments.

The freeze on the project means the halt of work, initially scheduled to start last year, to build an underground pipeline and a conversion plant to transform steam from the incinerator into energy to heat and cool the hospital.

According to city spokesperson Jean-Pascal Lavoie, quoted in Le Soleil, the city has informed the hospital “of its decision to return to the study phase of the steam sales project, considering the increase in costs.”

Marchand said that while the project has “an environmental value,” a potential $50-million investment by the city “is not worth it.”

Radio-Canada reported the hospital administration is still in discussions with the city about the steam project and that its suspension will have no impact on the construction of the facility.

Without steam energy, the hospital will be served predominantly by natural gas. 

While the hospital is no longer an immediate customer for steam energy from the incinerator, the plant, located in Limoilou, continues to supply nearby paper mills White Birch and Nordic Paper. It is also used to heat organic material at the city’s new biomethanization plant.

Still, according to city information, 40 per cent of the excess energy the incinerator generates is released into the air in the form of vapour. 

30

A plan to sell steam energy from the city’s incinerator to the new super-hospital has been shelved.

Photo from Radio-Canada