About

Vancouver, host city for the 2010 Winter Games, is surrounded by spectacular natural beauty including water, mountains and Stanley Park. It is located in the southwest corner of Canada in the province of British Columbia.

Coastal Indians settled in the Vancouver area by 500 BC, and Vancouver was incorporated as a city in 1886. Today, Vancouver has a population of about 600,000, and is the third largest city in Canada. It is a culturally rich city with many diverse communities.

Vancouver consistently ranks among the top three most livable cities in the world. It is renowned for its leadership in the areas of sustainability, accessibility and inclusively.

Vancouver is one of the nation's largest industrial centres. The Port of Vancouver is North America's gateway for Asia-Pacific trade. While it is still linked to its resource economy, in recent years Vancouver has expanded as a centre for software development, biotechnology and film production.

The City has a number of GHG targets:

• City Operations - 20 per cent below 1990 levels by 2010 (achieved).
• City Operations - carbon neutral by 2012
• All new buildings - carbon neutral by 2020
• Community Emissions - 6 per cent below 1990 levels by 2012 (on track).
• Community Emissions - 33 per cent below 2007 levels by 2020
• Community Emissions - 80 per cent below 1990 levels by 2050.

Strategy

Background

In addition to its rapid population and economic growth, Vancouver faces a number contextual challenges in its efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In many North American cities, where most development has occurred after the introduction of the private automobile, large detached suburban homes have become a cultural norm. Low fuel prices and relatively weak national fuel efficiency regulations have contributed to a continental trend towards large, inefficient personal vehicles. Finally, in British Columbia, energy prices are amongst the lowest in the world contributing to challenges in building a business case for efficiency improvements.

Vancouver has countered these broader contextual challenges by building upon its natural and historic assets. British Columbia is blessed with abundant hydro electricity making this source of energy relatively clean. The Provincial government has established its own ambitious plans to reduce GHG emissions, including a target to have all electricity be carbon neutral by 2016. In addition, Vancouver’s geographical growth constraints, beautiful natural setting, mild climate, absence of freeways, and efforts to align transportation and land-use planning have all combined to enable the city to become North America’s leader in developing compact, mixed-use communities. As a result, transit ridership, cycling, and walking are all growing rapidly and the number of automobile trips is declining.

Carbon Neutral City

Operations

The City’s general strategy to achieve carbon neutrality from its own operations is to use best practices to reduce emissions from civic buildings, fleet, and solid waste and to offset remaining emissions by developing incremental, verifiable GHG reduction projects and programs in the local community.

In 2003, the City approved its Corporate Climate Change Action Plan. As of 2008, GHG emissions from City operations were 33 per cent below 1990 levels.

The key actions that led to these reductions have been the replacement of old civic facilities with more efficient new ones, undertaking comprehensive energy retrofits of existing City buildings using energy performance contracts, the right-sizing of vehicles and the use of bio-diesel blends in the City fleet.

To offset the remaining emissions from City operations, Vancouver is developing a range of new projects and programs to reduce community GHG emissions.

Community

In 2005 the City adopted its Community Climate Change Action Plan, committing staff and financial resources towards reducing community emissions by 6 per cent below 1990 levels by 2012.

As of 2008, Vancouver’s per capita GHG emissions were 4.6 tonnes per person, which is the lowest of any major North American city. In addition to its success in integrating land-use and transportation planning to reduce the need for vehicle trips, the energy efficiency provisions in the Vancouver Building Bylaw are the strictest in Canada and the implementation of the landfill gas recovery and cogeneration project have also reduced emissions significantly. As a result of these efforts, Vancouver’s community greenhouse gas emissions peaked in 2000 and have returned to 1990 levels despite rapid population and economic growth. New City of Vancouver and Province of British Columbia initiatives currently under development aim to reduce absolute emissions levels in order to meet the ambitious targets that have been established.

Vancouver’s strong real estate market arising from its attractive natural setting and sound economic foundation combined with its authority to regulate buildings provide the City with great opportunities to lead efforts in North America to have all new buildings climate neutral by 2020.

In 2008 the City of Vancouver updated its building code for one and two family homes. It is the greenest building code in North America for new houses and will result in energy savings of up to 33 per cent. In addition, the City is seeking new approaches to regulate energy use that will enable it to continuously improve the energy performance of new buildings in an effort to achieve the carbon neutral new buildings target by 2020.

To build staff and local professional capacity for developing high performance sustainable buildings, the City has required that all new civic buildings as well as those constructed for the 2010 Olympic Athletes’ Village achieve a LEED Gold rating. The community centre for this development has achieved LEED Platinum and the City has also built a net-zero demonstration building.

The South East False Creek Neighbourhood Energy Utility:

• Is the first system in North America to use sewer heat pump technology
• Will reduce GHG emissions from space and domestic water heating by over 50 per cent
• Has established a replicable model in North America by demonstrating a fiscally responsible approach to energy infrastructure that also yields significant GHG reductions

Finally, the City has formed a Neighbourhood Energy Utility (NEU) to explore opportunities for and develop district energy systems based on sustainable energy sources. The first system uses waste heat recovered from the municipal sewer system which is distributed to buildings throughout the South East False Creek neighbourhood using a network of underground hot water pipes. The system is supplemented with solar heated water from some of the buildings in the neighbourhood.

The City of Vancouver is working to establish itself as the clear North American leader, to be the greenest city in the world by 2020, in significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Vancouver is focusing on approaches where it can have the greatest impact including improving its own operations, integrated and sustainable land-use and transportation planning, enabling renewable district energy systems, and requiring excellent energy performance from buildings.