Southwood Circle to Become Winnipeg’s First Neighbourhood Fully Serviced by Geothermal Energy

On September 9, Premier Wab Kinew announced a residential area planned for the former Southwood Golf Course, Southwood Circle, will be the first in a Winnipeg neighbourhood to be entirely serviced by geothermal energy.

“We’re going to have our first district geothermal system. It’s a heat-pump technology, but instead of heating a home in a carbon-free way on a one-home basis, it’s a whole neighbourhood,” he said on CBC Manitoba’s Information Radio.

The geothermal system in Southwood Circle will be Manitoba’s first large-scale geothermal district and will avoid between 400 and 1,600 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, Environment and Climate Change Minister Mike Moyes said.

“This project is helping Manitoba position itself as a clean energy leader and is going to lower the impact on the electricity grid.”

The land was purchased by the university in 2008. Site preparation work for the Southwood Circle development began in 2023.

The provincial government is spending $4 million to provide the geothermal heating and cooling to the developers of Southwood Circle, which is estimated to take about 20 to 30 years to complete and cost $6 billion.

The first phase is estimated to take 10 years.

“We’re eliminating the barrier to this neighbourhood having this climate-friendly technology. So us as a province, we’re going to put the $4 million in and make sure that this district geothermal gets installed and then boom, more than 1,000 homes will have this great climate heating technology,” Kinew said.

“It’s a notable milestone, but hopefully this is just the one step that proves the concept, and then we can see a whole bunch more district geothermal neighbourhoods popping up throughout the province.”