Cooling Toronto Using Lake Ontario

An anonymous reader writes "Air cooled by the frigid waters deep in Lake Ontario started bringing relief to buildings in downtown Toronto on Tuesday after the valves were symbolically opened on the multi-million-dollar project. The company says that they have the capacity to air condition 100 office buildings or 8,000 homes - the equivalent of 32 million square feet of building space. They note that the cooling system reduces energy usage, freeing up megawatts from the Ontario's electrical grid, minimizes ozone-depleting refrigerants and reduces the amount of carbon dioxide entering the air."

Comments

Lake warming

[davek]

First of all, when the world trade centeres existed, they were air conditioned using the waters of the hudson river, so this is an old idea. Secondly, what kind of environmental consequences will happen when the bottom of the lake starts to warm up? The great lakes make up a large part of the weather system in the northeast of the US. If they change, the whole weather pattern could change. I, for one, am skeptical.

But then again, I'm sitting in Hungary, in a room with no air conditioning, on a hot august day, and there's at least 15 big fat room-heaters in this little office. I would kill for some air conditioning.

-Dave

read the article

[Barbarian]

The water will be treated and enter the drinking water supply at normal temperature after it is used to cool buildings. It will just take the place of other water that would enter the drinking water, and be discharged the way it all currently is.

Changes the Ecosystem no matter what

[cyngus]

There is no way that this won't change the ecosystem of the lake. If you extract cool water from the bottom, you're in effect bringing warmer water further down. This will change plant and animal life at different levels of the lake. Whether it will be destructive or not, who knows. Using ground water (or lake water) for cooling is becoming more popular, as it is cheap and appears green. I just wonder if we'll say the same thing in 50 years when we've thrown water system all out of whack. Maybe we won't, I hope not, but I don't think enough studying has been done of the effects.

Re:As a pedestrian I welcome this

[WindBourne]

Come winter, you will wish otherwise.