Ice arenas are energy hogs. Ramsey County is doing something about it.

As Minnesota winters continue to warm, indoor ice arenas have become essential for hockey lovers or anyone who enjoys skating. But the rinks are energy hogs that make the problem worse.

Ramsey County is doing something about it.

The county is wrapping up work this month to upgrade its 11 indoor ice arenas, installing LED lights and smart thermostat controls, beefing up insulation, replacing old gas furnaces with new ones and installing rooftop solar. The improvements, county officials say, will cut energy use at the facilities by more than a fifth, reducing overall greenhouse gas emissions and saving the county money.

The $6.6 million project included installing a 350-kilowatt rooftop solar array on Aldrich Arena in Maplewood and a 1 megawatt array on TCO Sports Garden Arena in Vadnais Heights. Altogether, the improvements are expected to save the county nearly $350,000 and slash emissions by roughly 530 metric tons every year.

“You probably don’t think about how much energy consumption takes place within an indoor ice rink,” said Ramsey County Parks and Recreation Director Mark McCabe.

Federal tax credits made available under the Inflation Reduction Act paid for roughly $1.4 million of Ramsey County’s project.

Last year, McCabe said, Aldrich Arena alone consumed as much electricity as 60 average U.S. homes. That energy, which excludes the natural gas burned to heat the facility, largely comes from refrigerating the floor to maintain the ice, he said. The electric Zamboni and overhead lights also use a good amount of power, he said.

McCabe said the county adopted its plan after Minnesota ratified its own climate action plan in 2022 and passed a historic law in 2023 to transition the state fully to carbon-free electricity by 2040.

Russ Landry, engineering manager for the Center for Energy and Environment, said ice arenas use a lot of power, with the typical Twin Cities arena using as much annual energy as 140 homes. Landry, who has worked with about 50 ice arenas around the state to reduce their energy costs, said there are many things ice rink owners can do to make them more efficient.

One way, he said, is to use the heat generated by refrigerating the floor to also help heat the building, which otherwise uses gas furnaces. Ice arena owners can also install something called low-emissivity ceilings, which reflect heat away from the building on hot days, Landry added.

Ramsey County spokesperson Casper Hill said the county installed low-emissivity ceilings at all of the arenas that could support them, but Aldrich Arena wasn’t among them. None of the improvements involved utilizing heat expelled from cooling the ice, but the county did make other improvements to their heating systems, including new technology that will allow staff to remotely monitor the bleacher heaters, ice temperature and refrigerant leaks, he said.

Landry was impressed by the county’s projected energy savings. While he didn’t work with Ramsey County on its project, he called a 25% annual electricity reduction significant.

The renovations come as the World Junior Hockey Championship returns to Minnesota this week for the first time since 1982. It kicks off Dec. 26 at Grand Casino Arena in St. Paul and Mariucci Arena in Minneapolis. While the games won’t be played in county rinks, county officials said their arenas will be plenty packed with high schoolers and other community members all week.

Aldrich Arena hosts more than 100 high school hockey league and playoff games every year.