Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, being Friday, I will start off my statement with some humour. There are many ways to conserve energy, Mr. Speaker. Instead of turning up the heat, you can put on a sweater and slippers, or you can curl up with a big hairy dog.
There are also other ways; the solar wall, Mr. Speaker, which is a northern invention. There is an incentive program to help people with the costs of installing the solar wall in non-residential buildings. The biggest return on costs is the solar wall. It captures heat from the sun and pre-heats the air going into the building. In many northern places, strong sunlight is available five to nine months a year. No matter what the outside temperature is, the solar wall works in the North.
We have seen two examples of it already with the Weledeh School's solar wall and one at the Fort Smith Recreation Centre. The Weledeh wall is 200 square metres and cost $70,000. This system sucks in air from outside and can heat that air to 30 degrees Celsius, Mr. Speaker.
Forty percent of the cost was a grant from the federal government, so they recouped $28,000 from the Department of Natural Resources. The wall will pay for itself in six years. The school saves 8,700 litres of heating oil a year. Over the 50-year estimated life of the school, that is 435,000 barrels of oil that will not be used. This saves the fossil fuels going into the atmosphere, saves on greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming, Mr. Speaker.
We need to take advantage of this technology. To do that, we need to examine every new building going up in the North to see if it is possible to install a solar wall. Under the federal Department of Natural Resources' Solar Wall Program, solar walls have to be in place by March 2004 to take advantage of the grant. It is called the Renewable Energy Deployment Initiative.
The GNWT should look at incentives such as this for residential houses to help offset rising costs in the Northwest Territories today, Mr. Speaker. There is a software program through the Arctic Energy Alliance, a non-profit organization that can help calculate heat savings for new buildings with solar walls.
Mr. Speaker, there are lost opportunities every time a new commercial, residential or institutional building goes up in the...