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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
If you have noticed your energy bills skyrocketing this year, you are not alone.

As fuel oil prices rise, many are looking to alternative energy to save on shelter costs such as the City of Yellowknife's wood pellet boiler system at the Community Arena. - Thandie Vela/NNSL photo

Fuel oil prices have been rising steadily over the past 12 months, contributing to increased shelter costs in the city.

Last month, the price of fuel oil in Yellowknife was gauged at rates more than 20 per cent higher than the same time last year, following a price increase of 26.5 per cent in September 2011 compared to September 2010, and 30 per cent inflation from August 2010 to August 2011, Statistics Canada surveys showed.

While these fluctuations may seem alarming, similar price increases have been seen across the country, said Jeff Barichello, NWT Bureau of Statistics economic statistician.

"Energy prices are quite volatile just by nature," Barichello said. "So they do go up and down quite a bit."

Local distributors have no bearing on the fuel oil prices, Bassett Petroleum Distributors Ltd. vice-president Norm Bassett said, and are also disadvantaged by rising costs.

"I wish it never rose, I wish it stayed below a dollar," he said, estimating the price at about $1.30 per litre for homeowners and $1.15 for the City of Yellowknife. "We've definitely seen increases but, in the end, all we can control is our freight costs. Nothing we do has any influence on the price of fuel and we don't put anything on top.

"In the end, it's the Shells, the Essos, the Petro Canadas, the main corporations that control the price of the fuel and that's more a reflection of how the world is turning and how the world is doing the fuel pricing."

A weakening Canadian dollar has also affected fuel oil prices, said Louie Azzolini, Arctic Energy Alliance executive director, who encourages people to look into alternative energy options.

"Our core mission is to help people save money by using less fuel oil," Azzolini said.

"By helping people use alternative energy, they could either shift off fuel oil completely or do other things like install pellet stoves so they're consuming less fuel oil to heat their homes."

Not only is the price of a cord of wood much steadier than oil prices, heating with pellets can amount to savings between 30 and 50 per cent for the same amount of heat energy, Azzolini said.

The city has been especially successful with wood pellet boilers, energy co-ordinator Mark Henry said, noting two commercial-sized wood pellet boilers provide 95 per cent of the energy load at the Community Arena and the Ruth Inch Memorial Pool.

Before installing the boilers in December 2008, the facilities used about 300,000 litres of fuel oil each year.

The 740-kilowatt boilers consume about 650 tonnes of pellets annually, which is about 16 truckloads, saving the City of Yellowknife almost $200,000 a year with today's energy pricing.

"Yellowknife has adopted wood pellets in a big way and we've seen the savings of that," said Mark Heyck, spokesperson for the City of Yellowknife.

"We've seen in the last several years that both residents and businesses and governments have really jumped on the wood pellet bandwagon."

In addition to the financial benefits, there is "significant" environmental benefit to switching to wood pellets, Henry said, noting just one of the commercial pellet boilers installed reduced the city's greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent.

As far as the city's district energy plan to heat 39 downtown buildings with a mixture of wood pellet boilers and geothermal heat from beneath the now-defunct Con Mine, Heyck said they are still in negotiations but hopeful they will have an announcement sometime in the new year.

It takes an estimated seven million litres of fuel oil to heat the buildings now, Heyck added.

As for the city's oil distributors who will lose these million-dollar oil purchases, some may just get into hauling wood pellets.

"Everybody's got to adapt to the situation and so do we," Bassett said.

"We're always looking to new ways of doing things and there shouldn't be a dependency on diesel fuel."

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