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9/12/2025
WT Staff
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Sep 23, 2025 433 pm EDT
I started Noventa Energy Partners with a mission to be a disruptive force for positive change in the renewable energy space, challenging people to think out of the box as we had done at Enwave when we built Deep Lake Water Cooling, to re-imagine energy and to re-imagine what is possible if we just really look around us and find ways to, to do things that are different.
- Dennis Fotinos, Founder and President
Noventa Energy Partners deploys disruptive technology for heating and cooling buildings
Dennis Fotinos earned his renewable energy stripes early. One of the youngest-ever Councillors elected in the City of Toronto he transitioned into management of the City's downtown district energy (DE) system in the late 1990's. The success of the highly innovative Deep Lake Water Cooling project attracted global attention for Enwave, inspiring Brookfield Asset Management to get into the district energy sector. Not one to sit back in ease and complacency, Fotinos launched again, this time with German technology developer, Huber, deploying disruptive thermal energy transfer technology accessible by and for all cities.
Q and A with Dennis Fotinos, Founder Noventa Energy Partners and former CEO of Enwave
Toronto's long road to Net Zero
Written responses to our questions below have been provided by Noventa Energy Partners.
Noventa's Wastewater Energy Transfer™️ (WET™️) system provides decarbonized energy to buildings using raw wastewater from the municipal sewage system. At Toronto Western Hospital, the energy harnessed from wastewater using the proprietary HUBER ThermWin technology and Noventa process innovation, will supply 19 MW of thermal energy or 90% of the campus' heating and cooling needs. This will reduce the hospital’s Scope 1 greenhouse gas emissions by 8,400 metric tonnes each year. That’s the equivalent to removing circa 1,800 fuel-burning cars from the road each year. Over the life of the project, Toronto Western Hospital will see a cumulative reduction in Scope 1 greenhouse gas emissions of approximately 250,000 tonnes. Noventa WET™️ Systems are anchored by the HUBER ThermWin®️ technology for which Noventa is the exclusive distributor.
Dennis Fotinos, Founder & Executive Chairman of Noventa Energy, said: "Around 30% of the world’s energy-related carbon emissions are produced from conventional methods of heating and cooling buildings. The system we have installed at the hospital demonstrates the significant opportunity to reduce the carbon emissions of large commercial sites using the latent energy in wastewater, an abundant renewable resource."
WaterToday submitted questions for Noventa Energy Partners' Founder, Dennis Fotinos. The questions and answers pertain to the largely untapped resource flowing abundantly under all cities. According to Mr. Fotinos, where this thermal energy source can be harnessed in a district energy (DE) delivery model, buildings can be heated three times more efficiently than conventional natural gas systems and cooled 40% more efficiently than traditional chiller systems.
WaterToday: Tell us about yourself, and your thermal energy business.
Dennis Fotinos: Noventa Energy Partners is my second venture in the renewable energy space. The first was Enwave Energy, which I started in 1997-98 with the support of OMERS and the City of Toronto. We sold that business in 2013 to Brookfield and I stayed for four years before I got the bug again. In 2018 I saw the opportunity to do something different, deploying a really cool technology from Europe that used wastewater to produce carbon free heating and cooling.
Although we don’t hesitate to incorporate other low-carbon technologies in our projects, the foundation of our business is Wastewater Energy Transfer or WET technology as we call it. That’s because Noventa is a global renewable energy company and wastewater is an abundant, constantly replenishing source of carbon free thermal energy that is available in every city and country around the world.
Wastewater energy is not new. It was used in the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics to provide heating to the Athlete’s Village. However, with our Toronto Western Hospital ("TWH") WET project, we are demonstrating that wastewater energy is equally as effective in providing cooling as it is heating. – and that is important because air conditioning consumes a lot of energy, placing more strain on our already overburdened electricity system.
WT: You say all projects can access a thermal energy source using your WET™️technology. How does a municipality or manufacturing facility, or institution initiate a project? Tell us the steps to develop a district energy grid using WET™️?
Fotinos: You start by identifying buildings or, better yet, clusters of buildings that are large energy consumers ,and/or have a mandate to reduce their carbon emissions. Then you strategically design the DE system that will allow you to achieve economies of scale and load diversification to support the large capital outlay that is required. A well planned DE system will also facilitate the use of different renewable energy technologies, which may not be viable for stand-alone buildings. Then you secure the anchor customer(s) which will ultimately be the catalyst(s) for wider community adoption if you have a compelling value proposition.
In dense urban centres, our WET proposition is very compelling for those who wish to decarbonize. That's because available renewable energy options are limited due to space constraints and congestion. When space is not a problem, you can put up wind farms, or do massive geothermal bore fields, or massive solar arrays. However, when your building is landlocked, your options are limited. Even in cities like Toronto, which has an amazing resource in Deep Lake Water Cooling, if you are too far north it’s not an option. So, you have to look at alternatives. And that’s where Wastewater Energy Transfer comes in. With a constantly replenishing source of carbon-free thermal energy flowing in sanitary sewers below our streets, WET systems can provide meaningful GHG emissions reductions.
WT: You can scale up, is it complicated to add new buildings as the area develops?
Fotinos:The current WET system has been designed to serve Toronto Western Hospital. However, the Mid Toronto Interceptor (MTI) sewer that we have tied-into is a massive 10 ft wide sewer that collects sewage from across the city. It has enough capacity to support several projects and thermal loads the size of Toronto Western Hospital So, expansion to serve the quickly growing surrounding community, is a very real option.
WT: Tell us what a wet well is.
Fotinos: The WET system has a couple of key components. Perhaps the most important one is the Wetwell as it provides the access to the sewer. In the case of the TWH WET project, it is a large vertical shaft that is 35 feet in diameter and 165 feet deep – essentially a 16-storey underground structure that extends 5 feet below the MTI to allow wastewater to flow via gravity into the bottom of the wetwell through a tap at the 5 o’clock mark of the sewer. The sewage flows into the screen basket of the proprietary Huber RoK4 located at the bottom of the Wetwell which holds back particulate matter larger then 6mm. That particulate matter is then carried up through the RoK 4 by a slow-moving auger apparatus and returned to the sewer downstream. The sieved brown water is then pumped up through the Wetwell to the proprietary Huber RoWin heat exchangers that accomplish the energy transfer to and from wastewater.
Thermal energy is exchanged within the shell-and-tube RoWin heat exchanger where the sieved brown water fills the shell while clean water flowing through the tube bundles carry the thermally modified water to and from the heat pumps that provide the lift required to satisfy the desired heating and cooling temperatures of the connected building(s).
With relatively constant wastewater temperatures that range between 18℃ to 22 °C year-round, the heat pumps don't have to work as hard to produce heating and cooling. That's because we typically heat and cool our buildings to 21℃ or 22℃ so the heat pumps provide a smaller lift, thereby achieving coefficients of performance that far surpass conventional HVAC systems.
WT: Your headquarters are in Toronto, and I see you have projects outside Toronto. Where is Noventa growing?
Fotinos: Our first project was actually in Seattle, Washington in January of 2020. Three months later, the border closed because of COVID. We couldn't get there, so the developer went with conventional equipment.
We are actively pursuing opportunities throughout Canada, the US and the UK where we are exclusive distribution partners of Huber Technology. In the US, we are pursuing some really exciting opportunities in New York, Massachusetts, Las Vegas and Washington DC. In Scotland, we have operations in Campbeltown, Stirling and Glasgow with a robust pipeline of WET projects across the UK.
Reducing the natural gas and electricity consumption in industrial operations is also an opportunity that we are pursuing with different manufacturing and food processing facilities. Our WET™️ systems, make more efficient use of energy, and provide cooling much more efficiently than conventional HVAC systems, so we can save them a lot of money - and we can certainly reduce their GHG emissions.
See WTNY.us report, Data centers run our increasingly digital world, here.
WT: Noventa has global reach, your energy source is abundant and accessible. How are you keeping up with demand?
Fotinos: Noventa is a small but growing company with creative, experienced professionals who constantly challenge conventional thinking to bring low carbon, cost effective solutions to market. However, we also collaborate with industry leading service providers to help us meet demand and expand our market penetration. These are market leaders like Huber Technology a 150-year-old company based in Germany with over 40,000 installations of their wastewater handling products worldwide. Huber has been delivering WET™️ systems in Europe since 2008. Noventa is Huber's exclusive distribution partner for the ThermWin System in North America and the UK, but we are also their largest customer through the WET projects that we build.
We build community scale projects, so we like to work with established local companies to deliver our projects and services. We use local engineering firms to develop detailed designs and stamp drawings because they know the laws and regulations, and they have relationships with key local stakeholders who can impact the project – plus by making them business partners, they become a valuable marketing resource bringing in customers that we otherwise might not have found.
Once the WET system is designed, we, we retain local construction companies to deliver it. We have an operations and construction team, overseen by our COO Matthew Slade, that provides project oversight, but we will hire or retain the services of local professionals as needed.
Local relationships are an integral part of our business. Having local people tell our story is vital to our growth Local job creation is a big deal for us, and a big deal for the municipalities that do business with us. Stimulating local economies is not only important, but also part of our sustainability goals. We don't take that lightly. Creating high-quality, well-paying jobs where we do business is a cornerstone of our business model. We have done this in the UK, where we have a UK Country Head leading a team that operates our projects while pursuing some really exciting growth opportunities that will soon come to fruition. The same goes for the US, where our Senior Vice President of Business Development is leading our efforts in several states with strong climate change policies.
WT: How does it work best, the role for municipalities and role for developers in developing DE? Ideally, who leads in setting this up?
Fotinos: Municipalities will ideally facilitate the opportunities to develop projects that reduce fossil fuel consumption. They can do this in several ways, by providing incentives to developers available through the Planning Act to connect to DE systems; removing obstacles to developing renewable energy projects (like the recent changes to the use of parkland for geothermal projects); engaging local communities to support projects; and, as in the case of Noventa, facilitating access to sewers. Right now, there really isn't anybody else doing what we're doing, but I’m sure there will be as word gets out about our projects.
So, the municipalities have a role to play as facilitators of DE systems. In this respect, the City of Toronto is a world leader. From the support I received at Enwave for Deep Lake Water Cooling, to the strong support for our WET projects, the City of Toronto has been a driving force behind our success. With favourable, supportive rules and regulations in place, private developers can then build and operate the DE systems more efficiently than municipalities that have cumbersome procurement processes and limiting regulations that govern their affairs.
WT: Does this system work for cities with combined storm water and sanitary sewer?
Fotinos: : It depends. WET systems can work with combined sewers, but a lot will depend on the thermal energy needs of the end user. I have confidence in our CTO, Stephen Condie and his team to find solutions to the challenges posed. We prefer sanitary because it's more predictable, and you know what you are dealing with, but we can work with combined.
WT: Your wet well could increase storage for combined storm water and sanitary sewer, reducing the likelihood of overflows. Would you say your system would solve that CSO problem?
Fotinos: Yes, you're absolutely right, that's an added benefit. The wet well at Toronto Western Hospital is massive, I mean you're talking about a 16-story apartment building below ground. We typically just fill the bottom of that wet well with five or ten feet of sewage at any given time. The wet well could handle up to 40 ft of storm water overflow if it had to. That would certainly be providing significant benefit as a flood mitigation tool. There is an opportunity to achieve two climate goals with one action.
These are the kind of synergies that we have to continuously look to find with renewable energy. Storage is a very big deal, whether it's water storage or thermal storage, I think that that's going to be the big thing for us in the future, how do we incorporate thermal storage to maximize the use of electricity infrastructure?
Noventa Energy Partners
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