The Village embarked on a complete community wide assessment of energy consumption in 2007 after receiving grants from The Fraser Basin Council, paired with an Infrastructure Planning Grant from the Ministry of Community, Sport and Cultural Development.
Spirit Square, courtesy Village of Burns LakeWhat is a CEP?
A community energy plan (CEP) is a long-term plan that evaluates a community’s existing energy use and supply. The goal is to reduce energy consumption, improve efficiency, and increase renewable energy supply. It encompasses land use and transportation planning, site planning and building design, infrastructure, and renewable energy supply.
The Assessment
Burns Lake Staff and Council worked closely with One Sky, the consultant from Smithers that Burns Lake hired to complete the CEP in project initiation, development and implementation.
The Community Energy Plan concluded that 60% of emissions and energy consumption in Burns Lake comes from transportation, likely due to the passing traffic on Highway 16. Commercial buildings, in comparison to residential, consume almost twice the energy and produce three times more greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions Download the plan for more details.
The assessment covered tangible actions Village council could implement to decrease energy consumption.
CEP Implementation
Burns Lake outside staffOnce the CEP was complete, staff undertook a more detailed energy audit of municipally owned buildings; the museum and the legacy complex.
They found out that in 2007, Burns Lake spent over $100,000 on energy. This financial reality further solidified Council’s resolve to reduce energy consumption and to look at more efficient ways to provide heat to their buildings.
Using a grant from Towns for Tomorrow major retrofits were done to the buildings including upgrading the furnace with an air source heat pump, with electric back up. An insulation retrofit was also completed. The two major building retrofits have now been completed.
Once completed, they anticipate a $1200 annual energy savings with the retrofits on the museum building, which provides a payback of 11.5 years. Yet, when they consider only the 1/3 funding the municipality provided, the payback is only 3.8 yrs. They will be able to compare their actual costs before and after the major building retrofits were done in 2010.
The Village continues to implement policies with energy savings in mind with an anti-idling policy and a clause indication green purchasing in their purchasing policy.
Burns Lake proposed Community Heating NetworkThey are currently pursuing a "Community Heating Network." The network would be implemented for a cluster of buildings in the downtown core area. In 2010 the Village signed a Memorandum of Understanding with all the building owners that could participate in the project, which includes two First Nations Bands within the municipality. A preliminary feasibility study is complete.
The Village is currently working on securing the Engineering and Detailed Design assistance that will move this project forward. The preliminary financial analysis looks favourable, and pending receipt of the necessary funding, they hope to commence construction early in 2012.
Energy upgrades are also taking place at the local arena. In the first phase, waste heat will be captured from the ice plant and is expected to provide enough high temperature hot water to supply the Zamboni machine for the daily flooding needs of the ice surface. This should provide significant reductions to the natural gas consumption. The second phase, which is still under investigation, is the potential installation of a biomass boiler system to supply heat to portions of the arena that are currently served by natural gas or electricity. In addition, the Village is investigating solar lighting for the Burns Lake community square: 'Spirit Square'.
Key Players
Corporate staff are monitoring Village energy consumption and managing the retrofits of municipal buildings. Other departments are coming on board. The Arena Foreman is taking a lead role on bringing the 1970s-era arena up to standard and not only increasing the energy efficiency, but the safety as well. The financial department is also increasingly involved as they help out with the GHG data collection as part of their weekly accounts payable run, which only adds an extra five minutes to their task.
Engagement
There was engagement at the community level through a written survey completed during the CEP. Currently, there is a large sign outside the building stating the energy efficiency initiatives taking place and the expected savings. The Village office is developing "Climate Action Corner" in a local publication. Staff engagement was an integral part of the Climate Action Bootcamp, held Nov 24 and 25 2009. The Bootcamp helps local BC governments develop and lead a climate change action strategy. Burns Lake hosted the event attended by staff and elected officials. "Having both elected officials and staff in the same room, helped bring everyone to be ‘on the same page". Said participant Natasha Letchford, "We will continue to work together as we try and reduce our emissions and improve our community. It was inspiring to see people planning actions as simple as a carpool to work to discussing complex and visionary’ systems." The Village also hosted a "Community Energy and Emissions Plan" workshop in November 2010. (see CEEP overview attached below) It looks like engagement is working as Burns Lake had the highest reduction in electrical consumption for Earth Hour in 2010. (See below for coverage and the attachment from last year’s BC Hydro News Release.)
Burns Lake inside staff are holding a bag of coal which represents the average daily CO2 equivalent GHG emissions of a single family. Their ‘prize’ after the Climate Action Bootcamp.Burns Lake is dedicated to a fully transparent public participation process at the local government level. Therefore, ongoing communication with the community about the process the Village is a consistent goal.
Challenges
One of the major challenges is capacity. With a small staff of eight inside workers, the energy efficiency initiatives were falling to the corner of the desk. However, with the support of the CAO and Council, and some redistribution of workload, Burns Lake was able to continue our sustainability initiatives. Another common challenge has been funding. Burns Lake continues to apply for grants to help mitigate the costs. One of the goals of staff is to show council not only the environmental benefits of reducing energy consumption, but the economic benefits as well. They are currently working on a vehicle replacement plan that will be both environmentally and fiscally responsible. Other Working Group initiatives integrate duel goals of job creation and utilization of existing timber supply.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| Idle Free PW4.doc | 57 KB |
| Idle Free.doc | 35 KB |
| Burns Lake Energy Working Group Timeline.doc | 36 KB |
| CEEP Quickstart Pilot Overview - for BC Communities FINAL.pdf | 267.39 KB |
| Earth_Hour_2010_savings_report.pdf | 25.38 KB |