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Dr. David Richardson runs a stubby finger across a patch of grey-green lichen on the trunk of a tree. The biology professor smiles.
Ten years ago this tree, and dozens of others close to the Saint Mary’s University smoke stack in south end Halifax, were bare of lichen. Sulphur dioxide emissions from the university’s heating plant made the local air quality unsuitable for these sensitive plants.
In response to environmental concerns and a commitment to a more sustainable future, the university changed to oils with lower sulphur content, and then 18-months ago, switched from burning bunker oil entirely to burning natural gas. As a result, Dr. Richardson says there has been a dramatic reduction in harmful emissions, and the lichens have once again colonized the trees in the neighbourhood. “Lichen are an amazing signal of the health of an environment,” he said.
Across campus, Gary Schmeisser, the University’s director of facilities is also smiling. He’s looking at the university’s recent fuel consumption and heating cost records and comparing them with the bills from a year ago. “Lower costs with natural gas and greater efficiencies have saved the university close to $400,000,” he says.
There are no smiles, however, on the face of drivers creeping along the Bedford Highway. It’s late summer and the commute from downtown Halifax to Bedford and beyond has been hell for weeks. Heritage Gas, the sole distributor of natural gas in Nova Scotia, has ripped up the road along primary connectors and side streets in order to lay pipe for its new $30-million expansion into Fairview, Clayton Park, Bayers Lake and Bedford. The effort includes a natural gas link for the new Canada Games Centre athletic complex taking shape just off the Halifax peninsula. It will be the site of gymnastics, badminton and synchronized swimming during the February event.
It is the single largest business expansion in the company’s eight year history and the push is on to get all the construction work done before the snow flies. Company officials say they understand the motorists concerns, but insist it’s a sign of progress and cannot be done during the winter.
Ray Ritcey has been the face of Heritage Gas since its inception. He was the lone man on the ground before the gas distributor firm even had a name, and as president for seven years, he grew the company into a mid-sized energy enterprise with 2,600 customers and $16-million a year in revenue.
In September, to the surprise of many, he relinquished the president’s chair to take on the role of vice-president of Corporate Development for AltaGas Limited, Heritage Gas’ parent company.
With $2.5-billion in assets and an appetite for expansion, he said AltaGas’ $109.8-million acquisition of Heritage Gas in late 2009 is only the beginning of growth possibilities on the East Coast for the energy giant. He hints at opportunities in gas and power (shale gas, wind, and even tidal power) but on this fall day he’s anxious to have one final chat about Heritage Gas, the corporate baby he has turned over to others to lead to maturity.
Dressed in a fall appropriate pumpkin-coloured shirt, Ritcey moves easily around Heritage Gas` windowless boardroom on the Dartmouth waterfront, pinpointing traffic bottlenecks on a half dozen multicoloured topographical maps pinned to the walls. Each features weather map-like blobs of colour, and tiny writing indicating the start and end to construction. With 2010’s hot dry summer, he’s proud to report construction has generally been ahead of schedule.
For critics of the province’s foray into natural gas, the phrase “ahead of schedule” is as rare as a week without fog in Halifax Harbour. Nova Scotia was already 50 years behind the rest of North America when the idea of natural gas distribution was first broached in the late ‘70s, and the road from there has been like stop- and- go traffic ever since.
Ritcey uses his finger to trace dark lines on a map of North America that hangs on the boardroom wall just down from the local maps. A spider web of lines representing major natural gas pipelines obliterates many of the maps’ geographic features, but in the top right hand corner, Nova Scotia is easily identifiable: a single line representing the Maritimes & NorthEast Pipeline runs through it.
