CCEM 103 Question 4

[Carly Johansson]

Comment on what you found most interesting or surprising when reviewing the case studies included in Module 4.

[Carly Johansson]

I am surprised that there is not a single city or town in these examples from the top 50 cities or towns by population in Canada. Examples might be out there, but why is it the best ones are from smaller places – seems to be a trend that as the population grows, the harder it is to bring these sort of projects to significant sizes or fruition.

[Jen Grebeldinger]

I really appreciate the community/municipality level of involvement in the various case studies and find the diversity of the case study examples to be very interesting. Especially since each of these projects has required significant commitments by all the organizations involved with the success of these clean energy projects.

I am surprised that such elaborate & involved partnership for these excellent clean energy projects are not being highlighted, proclaimed, shared more widely & frequently for people across Canada & around the world to be more informed about our “home grown” examples.

[Carly Johansson]

I appreciated the focus on brownfield development in the Manitoba Hydro case study. Of all the case studies this one struck me as unique in its ability to create a plethora of knock-on effects including the support of public transportation, the economic revitalization of downtown Winnipeg, and densification. I would love to see how the quantification of these externalities would influence the economics of the project – and how in turn we can promote such projects across Canada. Thanks for sharing this project. I hadn’t seen it.

[Carly Johansson]

Ryan
I agree – the knock-on effects were excellent in this case, and I am guessing that if you have this level of planning you can have similar positive impacts in other urban centres. In Victoria, there is a significant harbourside brownfield site that is getting close to remediation completion. There is already significant talk of how to develop the land within the community (including community energy development) and with the local First Nation. I am excited that I will be here to see this long term contaminated site come back to usable space – it will likely have amazing impacts on the slightly downturned part of the city as well as be a great example of a community energy project in a capital city.

[Jen Grebeldinger]

Comment on what you found most interesting or surprising when reviewing the case studies included in Module 4.

I was very interested in the depth of community consultation that happened prior to the district heat projects that used biomass (Ouje-Bougoumou, Revelstoke) proceeded. Linking these projects to the local wood industry makes allot of sense and clearly had an impact in building support. In Nanaimo, there remains strong links to the forest industry but there is also recent experiences with proposals for co generation power plants that caused a great deal of community concern over air quality and other issues. In hindsight, there was no real dialogue between the proponent and the community about how the energy would be generated and how the community would benefit. Perhaps the local support would have been there is more time was spent upfront addressing the communities concerns and discussing how the community to best benefit from the economic spin offs from the project.

[Jen Grebeldinger]

Geoff. I know City of Vancouver has done an amazing job on the clean energy and sustainbility front. The Greenest City Action Plan lays out many of the policies and specific actions the City is striving for (http://vancouver.ca/green-vancouver/greenest-city-action-plan.aspx). There is also a Neighbourhood energy Strategy that lays out policies for developing neighbourhood scale energy systems (http://vancouver.ca/home-property-development/neighbourhood-energy-strategy.aspx), with the Southeast False Creek neighbourhood being a prime example of a working system.

[Jen Grebeldinger]

Geoff,

With respect to your point about the absence of examples from any of Canada’s 50 largest cities in these case studies, I agree, there are many examples do draw upon. As I followed a couple of web links connected to the Case Studies we were learning about, I ran across the following: http://www.vancouvereconomic.com/focus/green-economy/ & http://vancouver.ca/files/cov/bright-green-future.pdf

I wasn’t aware until discovering this information that Vancouver has been on this path toward being one of the Greenest Cities! Which made me wonder, WHY? How is it that this hasn’t been more publicly broadcast? Of course, earlier this week, Vancouver’s Greenest City aspirations was highlighted in connection to the meeting of a number of big city Mayor’s at the Vatican with Pope Francis. http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/mayors-meeting-at-vatican-seek-bold-climate-agreement-1.3161354

Hopefully, more & more of these Green Energy Action stories are shared, for the lessons learnered and the successes to celebrate!

[Jen Grebeldinger]

I was surprised that the city of Kimberly had such a long range vision for stimulating industry with renewable energy. That kind of long range vision, at the level of leadership, is uncommon in a small communities, in my experience, and it’s important to see that change. We will see what the effects of damaging climate related events are in motivating change. The current transformation of the electricity system in NY State is a direct result of the superstorm Sandy. If drought continues in BC for a few years and mirrors the experience in California, the incumbent energy providers and the general focus on business as usual may change.

[Jen Grebeldinger]

Regarding the initiative in Vancouver to become the World’s Greenest city, I witnessed a compelling presentation by some planners from the lower mainland who had just returned from a tour of Stockholm Sweden. They provided a comparison of sustainable undertakings that was humbling and a little shocking.

Though we need motivating language and promotion to drive the sustainability vision, it was clear that “greenest” in this case, clearly depends on how much of the world you are willing to look at. I’m not trying to be negative, but realistically we should be aware of how far behind much of the world we are (decades in some cases), and use this knowledge to take larger and more ambitious actions. The fear of failure and change blocks us, but when we realize that we are somewhere at back of pack anyways we can relax a bit. Instead of people feeling inspired that the PV array we built on Salt Spring Island is the seventh largest Net Metered PV array in the province they are actually dissapointed.

[Author]

Posts