Mississauga’s expansive Lakeview Village project could redefine Ontario’s clean energy future

When Sweden was closing its last remaining coal-fired power station two years ahead of schedule in late 2019, Mississauga Ward 1 Councillor Stephen Dasko was there to learn how the Swedes were doing it, and why the idea of throwing waste away was becoming almost outdated across the Scandinavian country.

At Stockholm Exergi’s power station in Norra Djurgårdsstaden, a former industrial port, forestry waste fuels massive boilers whose heat is captured, purified and piped into homes across the city. 

Forestry waste fuels vast boilers at Stockholm Exergi’s power station in Norra Djurgårdsstaden, where captured and purified heat is piped into homes as part of a national network that now provides more than half of Sweden’s residential heating and also cools office towers and hospitals.

(Stockholm Exergi)

The plant is part of a national network that now provides more than half of Sweden’s residential heating and cooling, a shared system that has made district energy an everyday reality after decades of failing, learning, sustainable mental shifts and political will.

In the 1960s, smog and acid rain from coal pushed Sweden to rethink its reliance on fossil fuels. When the 1973 oil crisis hit, the country turned to innovation and built a shared chimney by centralizing combustion, cleaning flue gases, and distributing heat through underground pipelines. It was complemented by a carbon tax and strong municipal leadership in the 1990s.

The first country in the world to pass an environmental protection act in 1967, Sweden was also one of the first countries globally to introduce carbon taxes as part of a larger environmental reform in 1991 for motor and heating oils, starting small at about €33 per tonne ($52 CDN) and working their way up to €134 per tonne ($216 CDN) currently, which is the highest rate in the world. The Swedish government aims to go fossil-free by 2045 and achieve 100 percent renewable energy.

(Eurostat/Canada’s Ecofiscal Commission)

Today, Sweden’s energy inputs are strikingly diverse: heat from wastewater, steam from incinerated waste, and excess heat from data centres and supermarkets. Together, these sources power one of the world’s largest low-carbon heating and cooling systems, meeting over 75 percent of the country’s energy demand when paired with heat pumps.

The model has since drawn admiration from around the world, including in Mississauga, where Dasko says the lessons from Sweden became instrumental in shaping the city’s own district energy ambitions at Lakeview Village, a 177-acre redevelopment of the former coal-fired Lakeview Generating Station site.

District Energy Systems (DES) are thermal grids that distribute hot and cold water to various buildings in a community. Buildings on DES have no boilers, chillers or cooling towers. All of their heating and cooling is provided by the DES from a centralized thermal energy plant.

(City of Mississauga)

He recalls late former councillor Jim Tovey had similar conversations with Swedish policymakers.

“What they told him was, ‘You don’t realize how fortunate you are’. When he asked why, they explained, ‘Because you’re located right next to a wastewater treatment plant. That’s a perfect opportunity to harness wastewater heat for your district energy system,’” Dasko told The Pointer.

“That idea became one of the guiding principles I wanted to ensure we carried forward not only for Lakeview Village, but as a model for other developments across Mississauga where it can work.”

On October 21, 2024, he joined fellow councillors in celebrating the groundbreaking of Canada’s largest district energy system and honouring Tovey by naming the 26-hectare waterfront conservation area in the community after him, calling it the Jim Tovey Lakeview Conservation Area.

Instead of each building relying on its own furnace or air conditioner, a centralized plant produces hot and chilled water in district energy. That water flows through insulated underground pipes to connected buildings, transferring heat or cooling as needed. In Lakeview’s case, the system will harness thermal energy from wastewater, an abundant, constant-temperature resource, and distribute it across the community. Enwave will build and operate the network, and Peel Region will provide access to the energy source and manage the wastewater infrastructure.

(Top: City of Mississauga, Below: Jim Tovey Conservation Area under construction/Credit Valley Conservation)

The mixed-use community will initially be powered by natural gas in early 2029, transitioning by 2034 to effluent from the nearby G.E. Booth Water Resource Recovery Facility, which is currently undergoing comprehensive upgrades aimed at increasing its capacity, improving efficiency, and ensuring compatibility with both existing and future residential developments.

Odour mitigation has also been a key component of the upgrades. The program, set to be completed by 2028, covers all three plants that make up the G.E. Booth facility. Clarifiers, tanks used in the water filtration process, are often a primary source of odours at wastewater treatment plants. 

“Upgrades to G.E. Booth started during the planning process for Lakeview Village, which included covering the Plant 1 clarifiers, and was initially funded by Lakeview Community Partners.  By the time the upgrades are finished, all the clarifiers will be contained internally along with numerous other mechanical and facility upgrades,” the City said.

In May 2023, a ministerial zoning order had doubled the number of proposed residential units from 8,050 to 16,000, expanding the community’s sustainable vision for the future.

Since then, two additional blocks were reserved to accommodate an elementary school for the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board and another for the Peel District School Board.

Underground water and wastewater infrastructure have been reassessed and revised to support the increased density, while traffic and transit improvements will continue to evolve as development progresses, including new signalization, road design changes, and additional turning lanes.

“As for the District Energy System, Enwave re-evaluated and upsized the level of equipment that will be contained within the Sustainability Centre which is currently under construction. The equipment will be brought in in a phased approach as demand increases with more projects being developed,” the City said in a statement shared with The Pointer.

Cranes tower over the Lakeview site along the shores of Lake Ontario.

(Alexis Wright/The Pointer)

Peel Region confirmed “the thermal energy generated by the plant is in excess of the demand generated by Lakeview Village and therefore does not present an issue with the increased density.”

Like Sweden, it has taken time and persistence for Mississauga and the Region of Peel to reach this milestone, especially when considering thermal energy networks (TENs) serve only three percent of Canada’s heating demand.

The Lakeview Village master plan was first endorsed by council in November 2019, followed by a detailed plan and official amendments approved in November 2021, which included the recommendation to use thermal energy recovered from wastewater at the G.E. Booth Wastewater Treatment Facility to supply the Lakeview Village District Energy Project.

That same year, Regional staff were directed to explore additional thermal energy opportunities and develop a broader District Energy and Thermal Network strategy for Peel.

A year later, the Region of Peel staff presented the strategy to council on October 23.

“Wastewater is a valuable resource and [a] significant source of thermal energy. It is a generational and pivotal opportunity with major environmental and long-term financial benefits for Peel and our local municipalities,” Anthony Parente, General Manager of Water and Wastewater at the Region of Peel, said during the regional meeting.

“Our thermal energy strategy found a compelling trend: the use of thermal energy from various sources, including wastewater for district energy purposes, is significantly increasing in Canada. Many municipalities are engaging in DE (district energy) development, ownership, and governance.”

Region of Peel public works advisor Farshad Salehzadeh explained that thermal energy could supply up to 80 percent of the energy input, reducing reliance on electricity and natural gas and cutting greenhouse gases by 6,000 tonnes a year.

“Since up to 70 percent of the DE operating cost comes from energy, this means major cost savings. Also, Peel's long-term energy contract, 40 to 50 years, improves financial certainty for the DE provider, where gas and electricity costs are volatile,” Salehzadeh said.

The regional council approved the strategy to expand this approach beyond Lakeview, potentially linking future developments in Rangeview, Port Credit, and even parts of Brampton to share thermal grids. 

Under the “participant model” Peel has adopted, the Region would invest in pipelines and earn modest returns, reinvesting profits to expand the system over time.

Brampton wards 2 and 6 councillor Michael Palleschi made it clear: this isn’t about profit, it’s about reinvestment. 

“I want it to be able to make our money back for the investment and then potentially have something to work towards that next area,” Palleschi said.

The technology depends on density and scale. 

As Salazade explained, projects like Heritage Heights in northwest Brampton currently lack the wastewater volume to sustain such systems. 

“You need a lot of wastewater,” he said. 

“It is certainly an opportunity (for Heritage Heights). If it becomes a DE system in the future, we would be able to connect to them. But at the moment, we can't.”

The City of Mississauga says since much of the city is already built out, new district energy systems will need to be integrated, at least in part, within existing infrastructure and buildings, which requires building owners to be willing to connect to the system and, in some cases, retrofit their properties. 

“The upfront costs for DE systems also present a challenge, as does the willingness of developers and others to adopt what some see as ‘new’ technology (which it is not),” the statement noted.

Palleschi also asked about the possibility of expanding north to Caledon, potentially partnering with Emerald Waste, which has faced criticism for its incineration expansion plans affecting local health and the environment, to explore small-scale incineration or energy generation opportunities.

“Yes,” Parente said.

“We look at this as where the big opportunity is, and that's with the effluent down to the south end. There's absolutely opportunities as the system grows and we have large amounts of flow. To recover the heat actually upper higher in the system, and use it for DE, it's a little bit more complex, but it's absolutely doable.”

The regional meeting raises a broader question: could the future of not just Peel, but all of Ontario, lie in district energy systems and thermal energy?

“It's a necessity,” Rathco chief executive officer John Rathbone told The Pointer, arguing that Ontario’s energy transition needs to be systemic.

“If we want to decarbonize ourselves, while also being less dependent on imported fossil fuels and utilizing the natural resources, sustainably, that we're literally surrounded by here in Canada. I don't see any other way of getting to a sustainable society from an energy perspective while wasting insane amounts of heat, which is what we're currently doing right now.”

In Rathbone’s view, Ontario is sitting on an untapped resource, the vast amounts of heat wasted from nuclear plants, data centres, and industrial facilities. 

“We could decarbonize multiple Torontos with the waste heat we already produce. We just need the pipes and the political will,” he said.

He points to a concrete example: the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station, about 70 to 80 kilometres from downtown Toronto. 

“For every one hour of electricity Bruce produces, three to five times that energy is released as waste heat into Lake Huron. If we built the district energy infrastructure, we could pipe that heat straight into Toronto, potentially decarbonizing 2.5 cities with no new fuel or power plants, just using what’s already being wasted,” he explained.

Rathbone also sees nuclear energy as a massive untapped resource. 

“When you build a nuclear plant, if you increase the capital cost by just 0.1 percent, you can make it a combined heat and power plant instead of just a power plant. We could capture and distribute that heat through district energy networks, the same way poles and wires move electricity,” he noted.

Rathbone cautions there remains one major challenge: he calls it “a people problem”, not a technical one.

“We dismiss profitable, proven technologies because of politics, ignorance, or fear of the unknown,” he said. 

A recent report by the Building Decarbonization Alliance (BDA) noted Ontario is building momentum, but its decentralized energy system leaves municipalities struggling to innovate. 

“As of May 2025, only one provincial energy regulator—the BC Utilities Commission (BCUC)—has developed a regulatory framework for thermal utilities,” the report stated.

Ontario accounts for roughly 13 percent of Canada’s completed Thermal Energy Network (TEN) projects since 2010. According to the BDA report, Ontario’s activity reflects the growing number of urban district energy systems emerging across the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA), including developments in Mississauga, Markham, and Toronto. While the province shows “moderate to high activity” in TEN deployment, progress remains uneven and largely driven by municipal leadership rather than coordinated provincial policy, a gap experts say must close for Ontario to reach its low-carbon heating potential.

(Thermal Energy Networks in Canada/Building Decarbonization Alliance)

Across the country, more than 80 thermal energy networks are now in operation or development, concentrated mostly in British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec.

Some early leaders include Toronto, where Enwave’s Deep Lake Water Cooling system serves nearly 100 buildings downtown, and Vancouver, where the False Creek Neighbourhood Energy Utility captures waste heat from sewage to serve thousands of homes. In Montreal, the city’s Olympic Park district is being redeveloped with a geothermal-based thermal network that will heat arenas and public facilities.

But progress remains piecemeal and policy-dependent. 

In most provinces, thermal energy networks lack regulatory recognition, meaning they are treated as commercial utilities rather than public infrastructure. The report argues that classification limits their ability to access funding, connect multiple developments, or integrate across municipal boundaries.

Some provinces, like British Columbia and Quebec, permit cities to adopt stricter energy and carbon standards, creating fertile ground for district and thermal energy adoption. Others have moved in the opposite direction.

The report criticizes some of the Doug Ford government’s recent legislation, including Bill 17, further limits municipal authority to adopt stronger green standards. More recently, on October 23, the Progressive Conservative government introduced the Fighting Delays, Building Faster Act, legislation that, among other changes, removes Toronto’s requirement for green roofs in new developments, weakening a key municipal climate tool.

“No provincial politician even knows what district energy is, let alone is willing to start the hard work of developing well-thought-out policy,” Rathbone said. 

“Municipalities are the least funded and least powerful level of government, and yet they’re the only ones trying to move the needle.”

What little support was left with the carbon pricing system was also taken away when the federal government repealed the consumer carbon price, eliminating it in most provinces in April. 

Québec remains an exception, maintaining its cap-and-trade carbon market, which sets prices through tradable permits and forces large emitters to either cut emissions or pay for pollution.

Provinces can set the tone for how Canada heats its future, but right now, most are out of tune. The lack of clear regulatory pathways, energy code modernization, and consistent carbon pricing has left thermal energy networks struggling to compete against fossil fuels. It’s a story of missed coordination.

(Thermal Energy Networks in Canada/Building Decarbonization Alliance)

The BDA warns that without consistent carbon pricing and provincial alignment, provinces like Ontario risk stalling the technologies that could drive deep decarbonization in buildings, which are the leading source of urban emissions in the province, accounting for about 45 percent of emissions in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA).

In Mississauga, the Lakeview Village project aims to tackle that challenge head-on. The district energy system is expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by roughly 10,700 tonnes of carbon per year once fully operational, the equivalent of removing more than 2,300 cars from the road annually. Over a 25-year period, the system is projected to prevent approximately 116,000 tonnes of carbon emissions.

Like Rathbone says, it is a “necessity” if the City of Missauga wants to cut its emissions 40 percent by 2030 and 80 percent by 2050, compared to 1990 levels under its 2019 Climate Change Action Plan, along with the Region of Peel’s target to reduce emissions 45 percent below 2010 levels by 2030.

The BDA recommends treating district energy as public infrastructure, enabling funding, integration, and private investment. Municipal empowerment is another priority, restoring cities’ authority to adopt stricter building codes and green standards to drive local innovation. 

Why aren’t Thermal Energy Networks (TENs) turning up the heat yet? It’s not the technology but everything around it.

(Thermal Energy Networks in Canada/Building Decarbonization Alliance)

The report emphasizes integrated energy planning, coordinating electricity, gas, and thermal networks to ensure infrastructure investments complement each other. Public financing and incentives, including green bonds, infrastructure banks, and public-private partnerships, could de-risk early-stage networks, while data and transparency mandates would require developers and utilities to report energy use, helping municipalities identify where district energy is most effective.

Rathbone believes the shift to district energy systems isn’t just about decarbonization, but energy security and economic resilience, which is essential given the current trade environment.

Roughly two-thirds of Danish households are connected to district heating systems powered largely by renewable and waste heat sources.

(Danish Board of District Heating) 

“Denmark didn’t just build [close to] 70 percent of its district energy system for climate reasons, they also did it for energy independence,” he said. 

“Canada should be doing the same.”

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