Sustainability Scholars Program

The purpose of this project is to understand how the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has impacted city-facilitated childcares and to explore opportunities for the City of Vancouver to better support resilience in the non-profit childcare sector. This report includes a literature review of the childcare sector in the current context of the pandemic and an analysis of the interview responses from city-facilitated childcare operators in Vancouver.

Partner: City of Vancouver
Keywords: social sustainability, childcare

This report analyzes data provided through the HOT2000 program to determine the efficiencies of different typological design decisions seen throughout metropolitan Vancouver and greater British Columbia. It will quantify how different architectural decisions impact energy efficiency, with a focus on TEDI, MEUI, and other costs to the homeowner or builder. These findings will help influence the BC Step Code in regards to how architectural design choices can have an impact on energy consumption.

Partner: BC Housing
Keywords: green buildings, sustainable development & green economy, step code

This project supports the planned renewal of the Regional Ground-Level Ozone Strategy (RGLOS) for Metro Vancouver. Specifically, the project investigated the background levels of ground-level ozone from the decommissioned Marine Boundary Layer Station (MBLS) in Ucluelet, B.C. One main focus was to find the underlying trend of background ozone over the seven years of operation of the MBLS after removing for seasonality and other contributing variables.
The project also explored the impact of precursor emissions on MBLS background ozone levels, classified geographic source regions of ozone levels on a given day based on back-trajectories, and compared MBLS to ozone trend levels at other Pacific Northwest monitoring stations.

Partner: Metro Vancouver
Keywords: air quality 

This report highlights the linkages between climate change, mental health, resilience, and community wellbeing. By way of a literature review, this report outlines ways to overcome resilience-building barriers, develops a set of resilience guiding principles, and offers five progressively staged recommendations to assist stakeholders in addressing climate change impacts on community mental health and wellbeing.  

Partner: UBC Climate Hub
Keywords: climate change, mental health, community resilience, climate grief, climate anxiety

Energy benchmarking can be defined as measuring and comparing the energy use of a building to encourage energy efficiency. This report presents a framework of recommendations for a successful regional benchmarking program for complex buildings, specific to the analyzed characteristics of buildings in the capital region of BC. These recommendations consider successful existing policies, recommendations of organizations that promote energy efficiency, and advice from industry professionals.

Partner: CRD
Keywords: green buildings, sustainable development & green economy

This study explores the trends and barriers in construction of high-performance homes being built in British Columbia. The observed trends in products, solutions, and challenges will inform opportunities to improve the cost-effectiveness of high-performance homes in Vancouver and British Columbia will be used to both building professionals and regulators.

Partner: ZEBx
Keywords: green buildings, sustainable development & green economy

The purpose of this project was to research the many opportunities that building automation systems (BAS) offer in reducing a building's GHG emissions. The report includes research on how to implement a recommissioning of the BAS in four City of New Westminster civic buildings; City Hall, the Police Building, the Library, and Century House.

Partner: City of New West
Keywords: green buildings, leadership & behaviour change

This project focuses on understanding the potential role of local contractors in the City of Kamloops in encouraging homeowners to undertake energy retrofits during home renovations. The work includes a jurisdictional scan to understand other retrofit programs, quantification of net emissions reductions produced by various retrofit measures, and the results of a survey of contractors to understand what to include in a new retrofit action plan for the City. 

Partner: City of Kamloops
Keywords: green buildings, leadership & behaviour change, social sustainability

The BC Energy Step Code (ESC) is widely being used as a policy tool to reduce the operational emissions from buildings. This research evaluates the embodied emissions of single-family houses built at various levels of the step code. The contributions of increased insulation and low-carbon mechanical systems are studied. Results show that the embodied emissions of a Step 5 house can be up to 67% higher than a similar Step 1 house.

Partner: City of Richmond
Keywords: green buildings, sustainability in education, sustainable development & green economy