Energy represents both a community’s largest single expense and its dominant source of greenhouse gas emissions. An energy plan is one of several promising sustainability initiatives for a community: it can be a stand-alone document, or integrated with a community sustainability plan or an emissions reduction strategy. It can address energy at the community wide scale, or be limited to a local government’s own operations. Some focus on pre-identified priorities, such as building retrofits, district energy feasibility, or energy use modeling.

A central tenet of most energy plans is the role that energy efficiency, renewables, and local energy resources may play to help reduce the use of fuel oil, natural gas, propane, and gasoline in the community. Expenditures on energy conservation and transportation efficiency tend to create local jobs and retain money in local economies, while much of the money spent on conventional energy supplies goes elsewhere to oil and gas companies and utilities. Communities can save money, reduce emissions, and improve livability by considering energy use, efficiency, and renewable energy in decisions about land use, transportation, buildings, and infrastructure. A plan consolidates a community’s ideas, and identifies programs and activities, to help implement them. For example:

Examples of Topics, Tools, and Actions by Sector
Land Use
· urban containment boundaries
· intensification, infill, conversion
· brownfield remediation
· street trees
· new street design
· zoning and development rules
· agriculture and food security

Transportation and Fleets
· low carbon fuels
· fleet management, vehicle “right-sizing”
· bike and pedestrian paths and facilities
· anti-idling campaigns
· asphalt reclamation
· HOV lanes
· traffic signal synchronization
· transit and paratransit

Buildings
· green building and sustainability checklists
· energy audits and retrofits
· solar thermal “ready”
· high efficiency lighting and heating
· xeriscape landscaping; “green” roofs and walls
· building orientation and solar rights

Infrastructure
· water pricing and metering
· waste heat recovery
· stormwater and wastewater management
· solid waste reduction; landfill gas capture
· combined heat and power opportunities
· district energy utility opportunities
· renewable energy opportunities  BC Hydro/ Fortis BC involvement in planning

Communities of all sizes and geographic locations have prepared energy plans.
For example:

• Burns Lake (onesky.ca/files/uploads/BLCEP [1])
• Smithers (onesky.ca/files/uploads/Smithers_CEP_Report_-_Final.pdf [2])
• Revelstoke (http://www.cityofrevelstoke.com/documentcenter/view/2625 [3])
• Central Saanich (http://www.centralsaanich.ca [4])
• Squamish (squamish.ca/node/333 [5])
• Capital Regional District (crd.bc.ca [6])
• Vancouver (Greenest City 2020 Action Plan is an example of a sustainability plan emphasizing energy goals and actions: vancouver.ca/greenestcity/ [7])

Assistance and More Information

• BC Hydro offers a "Community Energy and Emissions Plan QuickStart" program targeted at communities under 20,000 in population.To learn more about what community energy plans may contain, check out: https://www.bchydro.com/powersmart/local_government_district/ps_communities/ceep/ceep_quickstart.html [8]
  The Community Energy Association’s (CEA) "Community Energy and Emissions Planning: A Guide for BC Local Governments (communityenergy.bc.ca [9])
• The CEA’s "Energy Sustainability Case Study Guide" (communityenergy.bc.ca [10])