The purpose of this project is to examine the feasibility of utilizing solar thermal and solar photovoltaic (PV) systems across the Park Board’s real estate in order to reach the 2020 greenhouse gas reduction targets and reduce utility bills. The reports includes a high­level design approach through software calculators used for modelling along with a cost-benefit analysis showing the energy potential, monetary savings, and payback period for each option.

Partner: City of Vancouver
Keywords: climate and renewables, green buildings

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2016
Benjamin Medina

The Vancouver Police Department (VPD) currently generates approximately 7000 kg of police uniform waste annually. This report explores available methods for disposing of decommissioned uniforms and evaluates them for security, environmental impact, and cost-effectiveness. The project promotes the City of Vancouver’s Greenest City Action Plan zero waste goals, and advances the VPD’s Code Green initiatives.

Partner: City of Vancouver
Keywords: lighter footprint, sustainable development & green economy, waste management & recycling

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2016
Alisa Koebel

This project resulted from a mandate to set sustainability standards for city-owned and operated buildings higher than the standards listed in the Vancouver Building By-Law (VBBL). The intent was for the city to lead by example in matters of ecological sustainability in the built environment. By creating a corporate (city-related) green building policy, the city would be able to test, on a smaller scale, the effectiveness and viability of various requirements that might later be incorporated on a larger scale in the private sector as part of the VBBL.

Partner: City of Vancouver
Keywords: green buildings

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2016
Eric Douglas

The City of Vancouver (City) has put forth ambitious goals to reduce community and operations based carbon emissions through the introduction of a Greenest City Action Plan (GCAP). In order to achieve these goals in the City’s operations, the City of Vancouver has turned to renewable fuels, and recently biodiesel and renewable diesel have garnered specific interest. Currently within the 3.8 million liters of diesel fuel used by the municipal fleet, 5.8% represents bio-derived content from the use of B5 and B20 blends of biodiesel. However, in order to increase fuel emission savings, a transition needs to be made to higher blends of renewable fuels. This report summarizes an investigation into the use of higher blends of biodiesel and renewable diesel in the Vancouver municipal fleet.

Partner: City of Vancouver
Keywords: lighter footprint, transportation

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2016
Michael Coulson

The purpose of this project is to investigate opportunities for renewable energy use in the City’s building portfolio (560 buildings) and develop a long-term strategy (35 years to 2040) for incorporation of renewable energy opportunities and reduction of GHG emissions.

Partner: City of Vancouver
Keywords: climate and renewables, green buildings

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2016
Michaela Neuberger

This report consists of a review of international best practices in transit fare policies from cities around the world based on academic literature, publicly available transit agency information, and interviews with transit agency stakeholders. The report identifies opportunities and challenges for the Metro Vancouver Region in the following areas: distance and zone based pricing, time of day pricing, differentiation by service type, concession fares, and approaches to policy changes. Lessons are drawn from each case study with a view to informing the City of Vancouver’s ongoing participation in TransLink’s Fare Review process.

Partner: City of Vancouver
Keywords: green transportation

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2016
Peter Lipscombe

This report was prepared to support the “Preparing Vancouver for Autonomous and Driverless Cars” motion from February 2016. This report reviewed a variety of literature and was supplemented by interviews with City of Vancouver staff, researchers from UBC’s Transportation Infrastructure and Public Space Lab, consultants and TransLink staff. This information was used to determine future scenarios, a series of guiding principles for future policies, and immediate actions related to the introduction of autonomous vehicle technology.

Partner: City of Vancouver
Keywords: green transportation

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2016
Cail Smith

This report contains design guidelines for Class B urban farms on City of Vancouver-owned land. These guidelines were produced for the Department of Social Planning and the City of Vancouver as an initiative of the Greenest City Scholar Program. It is a living document capable of being updated and edited to fit the needs of both urban farmers and the City of Vancouver.

Partner: City of Vancouver
Keywords: lighter footprint, food systems, sustainable development & green economy

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2016
Christopher Szymberski

The objective of the study was to identify strategic actions for repositioning the Vancouver Landfill as a centre of Zero Waste excellence. The findings are based on 23 internal and external stakeholder interviews, a customer survey, and four case studies on facilities known for their resource recovery or Zero Waste.

Partner: City of Vancouver
Keywords: zero waste, waste management & recycling

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2016
Allison Lasocha

The purpose of this project was to provide recommendations on how the City of Vancouver can assist SRO and subsidized housing buildings to divert their waste. The report includes research to identify barriers and issues that impede implementation of zero waste strategies, research on measures that have been or are being implemented by other jurisdictions, an estimate of the amount of solid waste generated from SRO and subsidized housing within the City.

Partner: City of Vancouver
Keywords: zero waste, waste management & recycling

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2016
Andrew Martin

The Vancouver Landfill (VLF) Composting Facility closes the loop between collections and processing within City operations, diverts yard waste away from the landfill, and aims to produce high quality yard waste compost. This project supports the City of Vancouver's Zero Waste goal of reducing waste entering the Landfill by 50% of 2008 amounts. 

Partner: City of Vancouver
Keywords: zero waste, waste management & recycling

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2016
John Musil

This report discusses research conducted during the summer of 2016 on the potential value of establishing a 2030 District in BC. Information was extracted from interviews with participants and leaders from other Districts and staff from the coordinating non-profit Architecture 2030, as well as from a literature review. Findings indicate that a 2030 District in BC could realize a number of key benefits.

Partner: BC Ministry of Energy and Mines & City of Richmond
Keywords: green buildings, leadership & behaviour change, sustainable development & green economy

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2016
Fiona Jones

The provincial government has developed a stretch code with higher energy performance requirements than the B.C. Building Code (BCBC), to ensure that advances in energy efficient building design and technology continue within this new policy context. In anticipation of this new regulatory framework, this report assesses the supports available for the implementation of a stretch code in B.C. In order to do this, existing supports in B.C. are compared with those in five other leading beyond-base energy code jurisdictions across North America.

Partner: BC Ministry of Energy and Mines
Keywords: green buildings, sustainable development & green economy

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2016
Karolina Pol

This report provides an overview of thermographic technology and its applications in evaluating building energy efficiency.  By reviewing this report, it is expected that readers will be informed of both the benefits and the challenges of using thermal cameras to survey energy efficiency, and will be better equipped for evaluating the feasibility of incorporating this technology in municipal programs. 

Partner: City of Surrey
Keywords: green buildings, sustainable development & green economy

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2016
Andrew Plowright

This report presents an overview of a project to assist the City of Surrey’s application of FCM’s Partners for Climate Protection Community Milestone 5: Monitor Progress and Report Results. The project included populating Surrey’s community greenhouse gas accounting tool with data, providing feedback, reports and briefings on the community GHG accounting tool, and preparing briefing documents summarizing four notable Surrey GHG reduction projects.

Partner: City of Surrey
Keywords: sustainable development & green economy

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2016
Ian Theaker

Compared to other intensively managed and diversified farms, the UBC Farm is a highly integrated farm system. This allows the farm to manipulate a wholly contained food system that ranges from food production to processing and consumption across an agricultural and forested landscape. The purpose of this project was to help clarify the farm system components and relationships between them. This involved developing a concept map of the farm system then building a data index and and an evaluation sheet using the framework.

Partner: Centre for Sustainable Food Systems at UBC Farm
Keywords: ecological systems, food systems

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2016
Xuesi Shen

This report describes research intended to inform Metro Vancouver and BC Hydro about potential incentive models which could lower the barriers to obtaining an EnerGuide evaluation and label. Such an incentive program would assist in increasing the affordability, accessibility, and acceptability of labelling as an informational tool, leading to a greater understanding of this landscape by homeowners and builders and further normalizing home energy labelling in the region.

Partner: Metro Vancouver
Keywords: green buildings, sustainable development & green economy

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2016
Jessica Hayes

The Healthy Built Environment Linkages Toolkit is a guide to designing and creating a healthier built environment. It is based on health evidence research and informed by expert opinion. The toolkit was developed in 2014 for the BC Healthy Built Environment Alliance, a network of public health, planning, and design professionals. This research project was a review of new food systems literature since 2014. The research started with identifying key search terms and databases. Relevant articles were summarized and assessed. The strength of each link in the evidence diagram, was updated based on the number and quality of studies and findings supporting it. A number of new impacts and health outcomes were added as a result of this review.

Partner: Provincial Health Servcies Authority
Keywords: ecological systems, food systems, social sustainability

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2016
Deanne Manzer

The goal of this project is to improve implementation of energy requirements of the British Columbia Building Code and investigate the relationship of code requirements with the energy credits associated with the UBC Residential Environmental Assessment Program certification, for UBC multi-family buildings. 

Partner: UBC Sustainability & Engineering
Keywords: green buildings, sustainable development & green economy

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2016
Amy Ferguson

The GreenCare team focuses on issues relating to energy, environment and sustainability including recycling and composting at the Lower Mainland Health Organizations (LMHOs). The purpose of this project was to move forward GreenCare’s communications strategies and help in shaping the direction of their communications in the future. It was a combination of both a research report and pieces of online communications content. It included content writing for the GreenCare website, reviewing KPIs to track website trends, creating key metric reports, reviewing online engagement strategies, and developing a video proposal and script for a GreenCare video.

Partner: Fraser Health Authority 
Keywords: social sustainability

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2016
Tess Munro

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