Communities | Community Energy and Greenhouse Gas Mapping

Development and demonstration of a spatial community energy, Greenhouse Gas and cost model in the City of Prince George

A Community Energy and Greenhouse Gas Planning Champion

The City of Prince George  signed onto the Partners for Climate Protection Program in 2002 and achieved milestone 3 of that program in 2007 with the Council of the City of Prince George endorsing GHG emission reduction targets for 2012 (corporate: 10% reduction from 2002 levels, and community: 2% reduction from 2002 levels). The City is a signatory to the BC Climate Action Charter  having voluntarily committed to carbon neutrality with its corporate operations by 2012, measuring the community’s GHG emission profile, and creating a complete, compact community. For its efforts with numerous initiatives in the area of GHG emissions reduction the city received the 2008 LiveSmart BC Green City Award for communities between 25,000 and 100,000 population.

Residential Energy Characterization and Mapping for the Smart Growth on the Ground Process

In April 2008, CanmetENERGY teamed with Smart Growth on the Ground in developing residential energy information for the Prince George Smart Growth on the Ground (SGOG) process.  Building on the Urban Archetypes Project, CanmetENERGY’s role was to develop residential building energy information and research the development of maps depicting residential building energy demand for the city.

To effectively communicate residential energy information to SGOG participants, presentations , a Foundation Research Bulletin (FRB) on Residential Energy Characterization [PDF] and a target-setting poster were developed.

Although it was found that housing and building energy information was most relevant to the SGOG process, an integrated land use model was also developed. This enabled the spatial representation of energy use patterns based on the relationship between simulated energy use by building type and current and future development patterns to be visualised.

Preliminary Assessment of Renewable Energy Capacity in Prince George, BC

To better understand the use of mapping in relation to the supply and integration of renewable energy technologies CanmetENERGY funded the Collaborative for Advanced Landscape Planning (CALP)  at the University of British Columbia (UBC) to undertake spatial analysis and examine the potential for biomass and solar-thermal energies as alternative low-carbon energy sources to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Prince George, BC. CALP’s Foundation Research Bulletin - The Potential for Local Bioenergy in Low-Carbon Community Planning and its final report entitled - A preliminary Assessment of Renewable Energy Capacity in Prince George BC. -  determined sustainably harvested biomass from crown and municipal lands in the Prince George Community Forest could provide heat and hot water for 1430 residential dwellings; solar thermal installations in the downtown would be viable to augment hot water supply during the months of March to September.

The research also proposed a general framework for assessing the applicability of renewable energy systems.

Enhancing the Integrated Energy and Land Use Model to Support the MYPG Process

The opportunity for further development and demonstration of the integrated land use and energy model presented itself in the update of the city’s Official Community Plan (OCP) and the creation of its Integrated Community Sustainability Plan (ICSP). Through an ongoing process known as MYPG , the City of Prince George is developing these two plans simultaneously, presenting an opportunity to translate sustainability objectives into policy and action by integrating them in the OCP.

In accordance with BC provincial legislation, the Local Government (Green Communities) Statues amendment Act, 2008  as of May 2010, BC communities must include greenhouse gas targets in their Official community Plans; this necessitates the linking of energy and greenhouse gas outcomes to the land use planning process. Having established greenhouse gas targets as a part of its PCP participation, the City of Prince George is holding workshops in February 2010 to explain these targets to the public, ask them for feedback and incorporate the measures, reporting and policies into the City’s OCP update and ICSP process. The hypothesis is that integrated land use, energy and greenhouse gas mapping is an important technology that can help communities set achievable targets, plan strategies to achieve them and meet the requirements of the new legislation.

To be compatible with the MYPG OCP/ICSP process the integrated land use model developed by CanmetENERGY was improved to include, in addition to energy, greenhouse gas and energy cost values. Additional improvements to the model include a refinement of the energy modeling for existing houses by drawing on an expanded set of ecoENERGY retrofit audit records; predominant retrofit types are being identified and the lowest cost, most effective retrofits are being simulated to provide information for scenario analysis. Factors are also being developed to account for the effect of size on housing energy consumption. The model is also being expanded to include commercial, institutional and industrial buildings, based on available data.

Deliverables

To support the sharing of information and experiences from the project, deliverables include a preliminary paper entitled Residential Energy Use Characterization and Mapping [PDF]  prepared for the 2009 Congress of the International Society of City and Regional Planners (ISOCARP). Examples of maps and statistics, as well as a methodology paper on the development of the model will be posted as they become available.