Ottawa To Investigate Snow-Powered Air Conditioning’s Potential
by Matthew McDermott, New York, NY 
on 11.17.08
photo: David Carroll
A couple weeks ago we heard that New Chitose Airport, on the Japanese island of Hokkaido plans on using snow, kept cool throughout the summer under insulating materials, to chill the airport’s cooling system in the summer. Such a system would provide up to 30% of the airport’s cooling energy. Now the city of Ottawa, Canada is investigating something similar:
Snow Kept Frozen Under Wood Chips
According to CBC News Hydro Ottawa will be investigating the potential application of using snow collected from city streets and kept frozen under insulating materials (potentially wood chips) to cool Ottawa’s hospitals, universities and government buildings.
Few details on how much implementing such a system would cost, or potentially how much energy could be saved by using snow melt-water in air cooling systems; but the cost to collect the 400 cm (13 feet) of snow which fell upon the city last winter ran to CDN$ 88 million (US$ 71 million).
via: CBC News
Alternative Air Conditioning
Snow to be Used to Replace 30% of Japanese Airport’s Cooling Energy Needs
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I'd have to wonder why this would be "under consideration."
It's not like it hasn't been done before. In fact, that's the way they did summertime cooling before the air conditioner/refrigerator was invented.
I proposed this in a contest for the local hydro company in BC, it is ridiculously easy and effective technology. The snow needs to go somewhere might as well store it and use it.
http://www.bchydro.com/bucket/power_smart_innovation_challenge.printerview.html
I know that even in relatively snow-free Toronto, there is often a mountain of snow, plowed from the streets, that persists well into the spring. It contains oils, garbage, and all kinds of stuff that leaks into the groundwater and the local river. Sequestering this snow in some kind of cooling instalation, could have a collateral effect of allowing it to be treated.
Ernie: if things like this didn't require any "consideration" then why haven't you done it already?
In the real world, making something like this useful, and competitive with other technologies, requires a good deal of well-thought-out infrastructure. I suppose it would be applied to some sort of distrtict cooling system, not unlike Toronto's brilliant Deep Lake Water Cooling system.