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GEOSMART ENERGY
Innovative Leaders in Geothermal Solutions
Subheading
ENERGY
GEOSMART ENERGY
Innovative Leaders in Geothermal Solutions
Subheading
ENERGY » GeoSmart Energy4
As commercial business and private citizens in developed nations lay hold of an ever-increasing stance in the progression of corporate social responsibility it bodes extremely well for the enrichment of the renewables sector. Canadian enterprises such as GeoSmart Energy of Cambridge, Ontario are leading the way with innovative, cutting-edge geothermal energy technologies that stand to have game-changing effects on an ever-widening scale.
GEOTHERMAL ENERGY IS heat energy generated
and naturally stored in the Earth. Thermal energy
is the energy that determines the temperature of
matter. Geothermal energy of the Earth’s crust
originates from the very formation of the planet.
Geothermal energy is clean and sustainable with
resources ranging from the shallow ground to hot
water and hot rock found a few miles beneath the
Earth’s surface.
The Canadian Business Journal recently
spoke with GeoSmart VP Sales & Marketing Chad
Brezynskie about how his company is helping
to spearhead what is destined to be a healthier
and more efficient future for everyone thanks in
large part to technical innovation.
In 2005, the bulk of GeoSmart’s business was
found in rural areas. By 2010, the industry hit a
peak with various incentive programs, which led to
a considerably higher percentage of installations in
urban areas, although rural still accounted for the
5JUNE 2017 « The Canadian Business Journal
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ENERGY » GeoSmart Energy6
lion’s share of the clients. Today, almost 100% of
GeoSmart’s business is back to being rural.
Over the past six years Brezynskie and the
team at GeoSmart have been aggressively pursuing
rural areas that are not serviced by natural gas
because of a huge disparity in energy costs.
“We focused on rural areas because that’s
really where geothermal started; areas where
you can have the lowest cost of installation
doing horizontal loop systems, which is your
lowest cost of inflation,” he says. “They are areas
that have an acreage where we can dig the loop
and areas that don’t have natural gas. Those
rural areas often would be serviced by oil heat
or propane heat – conventional systems or even
electric heat. We’ve got the lowest capital cost
to install the system and the highest energy
savings. We can save a customer anywhere from
60% to 70% in those scenarios.”
GeoSmart is equipped with a widespread
network of heating contractors that are able to
take the company’s products to market. In-depth
training is also provided to all contractors
to ensure the successful installation and
maintenance of the equipment.
An incentive program for the eco-energy
program known as the EnerGuide for Houses
program was originally unveiled by the Liberal
government. When the Conservatives formed
the government there was a rebranded, all-
inclusive retrofit eco-energy program that
was primarily geared towards high-energy
consuming households that were in dire need
of windows and doors, insulation and upgraded
heating systems. Brezynskie says it’s a program
that helped springboard the industry forward.
With any sort of parity in energy costs, incentives
or not, Brezynskie feels GeoSmart has an
excellent business case for selling and installing
top-of-the-line geothermal equipment.
“When the grants ended we were at a point
in time when there was a huge disparity in
energy prices where it was really starting to rear
its ugly head. So we had natural gas prices that
were essentially just about the lowest they’ve
ever been in the history of natural gas,” says
Brezynskie.
Over the last five or six years there has
been a noticeable lack of government support
towards renewables – and specifically towards
geothermal heating and cooling systems. All
the while there has been a disparity in energy
costs that has continued to grow. However,
Chad Brezynskie, GeoSmart VP Sales & Marketing
7JUNE 2017 « The Canadian Business Journal
as Brezynskie notes, the positive news is that
consumers are starting to see adjustments in
electricity prices.
“We’ve got a full line of residential and
commercial product that can be applied to
anything you’re your typical residential single
family home to multi-level, high story condos
or manufacturing facilities or anywhere that you
have to move energy around and we have the
equipment to do it. We’ve done ice hockey rinks,
churches and community centres and town
halls,” he says.
As a percentage, Brezynskie estimates it’s an
80-20 breakdown of residential to commercial
although GeoSmart does have a full line of
commercial product available. There is also an
enormous amount of technical expertise that
yields results in collaborative efforts between
engineers and architects on larger commercial
projects.
Game-changing Technology The disparity of energy costs is something that
is out of the hands of GeoSmart. But what the
company can control is the ability to source,
develop and promote the optimal technologies
that use the least amount of that energy.
GeoSmart found a European manufacturer
that is now building the GeoSmart NetZero
product line. It’s a product that has just launched
this year and it is achieving energy efficiencies
significantly higher than any other system that
the company has ever sold before.
“In the GeoSmart NetZero product line
we’ve got a hydronic system that has the ability
to generate 5kW of output energy for every
kilowatt that it consumes. In the hydronic
product lines that we sold in the past we’ve had
equipment that was generating maybe 3.2kW of
electricity for every kilowatt that we paid for to
run the system, so it’s a huge increase in energy
efficiency that we’ve just brought to market this
year. We believe it’s a game changer,” reveals
Brezynskie.
The North American market has never ever
seen anything like the GeoSmart NetZero product
line before. It has the ability to provide full heating
capacity and full active cooling capacity and an
ability to do passive cooling, which means that a
compressor does not need to run.
“We’re just moving fluid from the ground
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ENERGY » GeoSmart Energy8
9JUNE 2017 « The Canadian Business Journal
loop system directly to the cooling side of
things for air conditioning. It has the ability to
heat a swimming pool as a by-product of air
conditioning the house. When you air condition
your house you’re dumping a bunch of heat.
With a conventional air conditioner system
you dump it outside, but with a conventional
geothermal system you’re dumping it to a
ground loop and with the GeoSmart NetZero
product we can dump that energy to heat your
swimming pool,” explains Brezynskie.
“It’s going into the marketplace as we speak.
The GeoSmart NetZero product line is a fully
modulating, variable speed geothermal heating
and cooling system. The compressor modulates
from 25% up to 100% capacity. This can be in a
residential or commercial application. It’s unlike
anything that anyone has ever seen here in North
America,” continues Brezynskie.
The 10,000-square foot facility in Cambridge
is set up in such a way that it can easily adapt
to scale up if need be. Scaling up seems like
a distinct possibility given that GeoSmart has
diversified its business base and is starting to
bring in new products that complements the
technology that is being sold to the market now.
There have been a lot of ups and downs
within the industry in recent years but Brezynskie
firmly believes they are now at the very
beginning of what looks to be long-term scalable
growth opportunities.
“In the past we went through a period
of instability but we’re at a point now where
the government and certainly global leaders
are looking at the environment realizing that
significant changes need to be implemented
or we’re not going to have a world to carry on,”
notes Brezynskie.
The use of fossil fuels – whether it’s pumping
at the gas station or heating a home with natural
gas – results in a carbon tax for burning that fuel.
The tax revenue generated, including industrial
cap and trade limits, led to the government
raising about $500 million. The proceeds go
towards initiatives to help solve climate change
and help reduce the world’s reliance on fossil
fuels, feeding back into the geothermal heat
pump industry, among other initiatives.
The Ontario government has gone on record
saying it needs to spend $4 billion to $6 billion
to help drive technological innovation to curb
climate change. If the government holds true
to pledged commitments it stands to reason
ENERGY » GeoSmart Energy10
11JUNE 2017 « The Canadian Business Journal
that geothermal will be very robust, with
GeoSmart playing a significant role in the
overall progression.
The geothermal industry has a number
of well-defined associations that are helping
to drive the business forward. “There is The
Ontario Geothermal Association where my
business partner Stan Marco sits on the
board of directors and nationally there is The
Canadian GeoExchange Coalition, where I am
a board member. We do our part at GeoSmart
to move the industry along and look to be
leaders,” adds Brezynskie.
With the NetZero product, GeoSmart
Energy is now successfully penetrating into
the U.S. market. Just recently the company
was at a geothermal conference in New
York where its technologies were very well
received by manufacturers, contractors and
distributors.
“For the past decade we’ve been a market
leader and we continue to maintain a very
significant part of the market share here in
Canada. We believe that as the market grows
we’ll continue to maintain and grow that
market share. It’s scary as well because of the
amount of the potential for the amount of
government support that’s coming – but it’s a
good scary,” says Brezynskie. CBJ
www.geosmartenergy.com
AS SEEN IN THE JUNE 2017 ISSUE OF THE CANADIAN BUSINESS JOURNAL
WWW.CBJ.CA
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