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 and Rural Development.
What is a CEP?
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.A community energy plan (CEP) is a long-term plan that evaluates a community’s existing energy use and supply. This is similar to a Situational Analysis. 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 GHG emissions Download the plan for more details.
The assessment covered tangible actions Village council could implement to decrease energy consumption.
Results
Burns Lake outside staffOnce the CEP was complete, staff undertook a more detailed energy audit of all municipally owned buildings. The Village completed a thorough building audit on two municipally owned buildings: 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 will be done by February 2010. The arena retrofits will be complete by 2013.
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.
The CEP acted as a launching pad, or a catalyst, for more ambitious projects, such as the developing Energy Working Group where various stakeholders came together to discuss implementing district heating.
Key Players
Two key leading players in taking climate action are CAO Tim Palmer and Director of Corporate Services Natasha Letchford.
Letchford, is the key person on monitoring Village energy consumption and managing the retrofits of municipal buildings, as well as the emerging energy working group.
Other departments are coming on board. The Director of Recreation Services 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 GHGi data collection as part of their weekly accounts payable run, which only adds an extra five minutes to their task.
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 sustainabilityi 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 |