Cleveland Thermal is closing its coal-fired downtown steam boilers, expanding its natural-gas boilers on Hamilton Avenue, and selling itself to a Canadian-based energy and infrastrucure company.
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A Cleveland Thermal employee checks on his co-workers repairing cracks in a downtown steam line as vapor releases in front of the Terminal Tower on Public Square in this December 2006 file photo. The company now is being sold to a Canadian utility company. CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The coal-fired steam boilers that have heated major downtown buildings for well over a century will be closed within 18 months, replaced by gas-fired facilities built about 30 blocks to the east.
Cleveland Thermal, the city-franchised but privately held company that has made steam at its Canal Road plant on the banks of the Cuyahoga River since 1894, will shut the aging plant by the end of January 2017 to comply with federal air pollution standards.
New gas-fired boilers will have been added to the company's second steam plant at E. 18th Street and Hamilton Avenue. That facility already supplies chilled water (for air conditioning) to downtown buildings.
But well before the big switch, in as little as six weeks, Cleveland Thermal will have been purchased by Canadian-based Corix, a very large privately held utility and infrastructure company whose principal shareholder is the British Columbia Investment Management corporation, or bcIMC.
Corix builds and manages water, waste water and energy utilities, including district steam heating systems similar to the Cleveland Thermal systems.
Cleveland City Council on Wednesday unanimously approved Corix's purchase of Cleveland Thermal, and the transfer of the 25-year franchise the city awarded to Cleveland Thermal a year ago.
Cleveland Thermal will keep its name, company President Marc Divis told council members. But it will apparently have considerably more money and utility expertise at its disposal.
Morrigan McGregor, general manager of Corix Utilities Ontario, told council members that bcIMC has more than $110 billion in investment assets.
"We have utilities in six Canadian provinces and 31 states. We are looking to expand into Ohio. It's a good time, during the transition to gas, to enter into this (purchase)," McGregor said.
"We have the capital and the backing to be able to lead that (transition to gas) and to make the investments as required to grow the utility both in terms of the energy supply as well as growth of the system in future areas."
In testimony before Council's utility committee a week ago, McGregor said Corix operates about 1,000 utilities in North America, serving about 1 million customers.
Corix utilities concentrate on sustainable development, local in scope, she said.
"We look at waste water, water and energy infrastructure at the community level. We do neighborhoods, university campuses, military installations, residential development and resort areas. Our focus is to create solutions to infrastructure problems that are tailored to the specific community," she said.
"Our energy systems range from more conventional technology, such as gas-fired, to sustainable alternatives. So we have geo (geothermal) systems, biomass systems, and a number of district systems," she said, adding that about half of the systems use renewable energy or technology.
Divis said the Canal Road plant will be mothballed while the company considers whether to build a new chilled water plant on the site.
Also, he said the company has not made a final decision about whether to build a gas-fired "co-generation" plant on Hamilton Avenue. Co-generation plants, which have been favored by the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, produce electricity and heat. If Cleveland Thermal were to build such a plant, the electricity it produces would feed into Cleveland Public Power's grid.
Cleveland Thermal's current owner is CT Acquisitions I Inc., an Ohio corporation formed in June 2004 that purchased the company from Virginia-based Dominion Energy, in December of that year.
On July 1, 2004, Dominion announced it would be selling the company to Ancora Management LLc of Greenwich, CT, an investment company.