Green City Hall

Fredericton City Hall Ranks Fifth in Town Hall Challenge

Fredericton City Hall has been recognized as one of the most energy efficient municipal buildings in the country. In the recent Town Hall Challenge, administered by the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority, City Hall ranked fifth out of sixty municipal administrative buildings in the competition.

Constructed in 1876, Fredericton City Hall is the oldest city hall still in use in the Maritime Provinces. An administrative wing was added in 1977. Despite the age of the original building and its addition, actions have been taken to boost City Hall’s energy performance. This included increasing employee awareness of energy efficiency actions, implementing a building management system, and conducting a lighting retrofit.

"Energy efficiency is such an important tool for long-term sustainability. It also helps decrease heating and cooling costs," said Fredericton Mayor Brad Woodside. "I am happy to see that our City Hall performed so well in this challenge. The recognition is a testament to our commitment to reducing our corporate environmental footprint and being financial sustainable."

In 1999, the City began a major retrofit of 18 municipally-owned buildings that were deemed high-energy users, as a part of the City of Fredericton’s Municipal Building Initiative, aiming to improve energy efficiency in all building.

Retrofits at Fredericton City Hall included:

• close monitoring of the digital control system that controls the Heating Ventilation Air Conditioning (HVAC) system for main facilities, and making necessary adjustments and scheduling to optimize energy consumption;
• continuous replacement of old light fixtures with energy efficient fixtures;
• installation of motion sensors on lighting; and,
• installation of dual-flush toilets and low flow fixtures.

The Town Hall Challenge is an initiative of the Mayors’ Megawatt Challenge, a program managed since 2003 by Toronto and Region Conservation Authority. The Megawatt Challenge is a collaboration among large and small municipalities, working together to lower their own energy use, emissions and operating costs while demonstrating leadership towards more sustainable communities.