Thinking Beyond Pipes and Pumps: Top 10 Ways Communities Can Save Water and Money

This handbook provides a practical resource on how individuals, utilities, and, most importantly, communities can save water and money. Designed for community leaders, water managers, and policy makers, this handbook seeks to inspire and facilitate action.

It promotes an expanded definition of “urban water infrastructure” that includes innovative physical components, water sensitive urban design, and conservation programs designed to complement existing water supply networks.

Six Steps to Sustainable Community: A Guide to Local Action Planning

Local action planning is the process of creating a strategic document that outlines specifically how your municipality will achieve a selected greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction target. The resulting document, called a local action plan (LAP), is the third milestone in the Partners for Climate Protection (PCP) program.

This guide covers the development of a community-wide local action plan (LAP), that is, Milestone Three in the PCP program. The information provided here also applies to the development of an LAP for a corporation or similar organization — although with some minor procedural differences. (For example, internal working group meetings are held instead of public consultations.)
The step-by-step overview in the next section, Begin planning, shows how an LAP is developed. All of the steps are illustrated with examples from planning undertaken by PCP members. The subsequent section, Sustainability Snapshots, profiles 11 communities at various stages of the LAP process. All but one are PCP members. The remaining sections offer insights, lessons learned and additional resources to guide your municipality as it designs its own LAP.

Secondary Indicators for Community Inventory Interpretation

This project was initiated to review and propose ‘secondary’ or influence indicators of progress related to energy and GHG emissions at the community level.

Specific objectives of the project are to: 
  • Identify practical indicators to support the CEEI sectors – land use, transportation, buildings, solid waste, and agriculture – to provide local and provincial government representatives with enhanced indicators for monitoring the effectiveness of local government policy changes;
  • Review currently used community-based indicators focused on energy and GHG emissions including those established for regional growth strategies and community energy plans, as well as identify suitable benchmarks appropriate to the local government in BC energy and GHG emissions reduction context; and
  • Define those indicators for which targets may be suitable and are also within the control or sphere of influence of local governments.

Green Energy as a Rural Economic Development Tool

The purpose of this project was to undertake a series of activities that will help rural BC communities and First Nations affected by the Mountain Pine Beetle (MPB) epidemic, better understand the potential opportunities of Green Energy development and its potential contribution to rural economic development and diversification. The project was designed to work directly with a number of small rural communities in the interior of BC. Many rural communities in BC have expressed an interest in learning more about green energy development and in potentially developing their own Green energy project (e.g. a micro-hydro IPP).

Life-Cycle Cost Analysis

A thorough article on LCC applied to buildings, with links to further resources. Life-cycle cost analysis (LCCA) is a method for assessing the total cost of facility ownership. It takes into account all costs of acquiring, owning, and disposing of a building or building system. LCCA is especially useful when project alternatives that fulfill the same performance requirements, but differ with respect to initial costs and operating costs, have to be compared in order to select the one that maximizes net savings.

Integrated Community Energy Solutions – A Roadmap for Action

This roadmap builds on moving forward to capture the additional potential of fully-integrated community solutions. The Roadmap represents the collaborative efforts of the provincial, territorial and federal governments, with important input from a wide cross-section of representatives from outside government, including non-governmental organizations and industry.

Innovative Infrastructure Financing Mechanisms for Smart Growth

The report looks at the potential for infrastructure financing mechanisms to contribute to smart growth. Each of the mechanisms has its advantages and disadvantages, success factors and barriers to success and may be applicable in specific circumstances. The report examines all of these issues in the context of specific case studies and draws some more general conclusions as to which mechanisms appear to have the most promise in Canada.

The Green Infrastructure Guide: Issues, Implementation Strategies and Success Stories

The Green Infrastructure Guide provides guidance on how local governments while using legal and policy strategies, encourage or require more sustainable infrastructure designs.

The guide refers readers to strategies, and highlights case studies of local governments that have already taken steps to incorporate a green infrastructure approach. The focus is on implementation mechanisms, issues and barriers, and on what lessons have been learned from experiences to date.

Green Bylaws Toolkit

The purpose of the Green Bylaws Toolkit is to provide local governments (municipal and regional) and the public with practical tools for protecting green infrastructure. It includes bylaw language that local governments in BC are now using to protect ecosystem health and explains the various legal approaches to protection, their benefits and drawbacks.

Summary Report on Local Government Climate Actions 2018

This report illustrates the continued progress by local governments to reduce carbon emissions through highlighting examples of the achievements and experiences of small, medium, and large communities in 2018. It includes:

  • Update on local government progress towards corporate carbon neutrality
  • Highlights of climate mitigation and adaptation actions taken by small, medium, and large communities across BC
  • Hyperlinked list of funding sources and programs used by local governments in support of climate action