Through grants, the Metro Vancouver regional district has been providing funding to create tools to help local governments and residents reduce energy usage, thereby reducing GHG emissions. In Metro Vancouver, around 40% of GHG emissions are from buildings and the built-form of our communities. Designing more energy-efficient neighbourhoods and buildings is not only critical to combating climate change, but can save people money.
Metro Vancouver has provided $60,000 over two years to the Collaborative for Advanced Landscape Planning at UBC. One of the projects that they completed previously was the Community Energy Explorer. This highly-graphical and easy to understand website, including maps and illustration, “provides a set of tools for exploring community energy.” It’s a very interesting site.
The Metro Vancouver funding, which is being combined with funding from other partner, will be used to make further enhancement to the Community Energy Explorer website. One of the other projects that is being funded will create a Neighbourhood Toolkit for Climate Action.
The following illustrations are a sneak peek of what they are working on.
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| An archetype small character home and accompanying resident narrative for the West Vancouver energy archetypes project. Source: Nicole Miller, CALP. Select image to enlarge. |
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| Energy retrofit options for the small character home from the West Vancouver energy archetypes project. Source: Nicole Miller, CALP. Select image to enlarge. |
Based on this West Vancouver archetype example for a small character home, it becomes clear that retrofitting a small home can be more energy efficient, thereby further reducing GHG emissions than building a new, larger house.
It will be exciting to see the full results once this project is completed. Presenting information in an accessible manner is critically important for reaching a wider amount of decision makers and residents in the region, and will hopefully result in more energy efficient neighbourhoods.
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