Vancouver False Creek Sustainability Precinct

The City of Vancouver will conduct a feasibility study to assess the incorporation of a highly innovative and adaptable community energy system that would generate and distribute heating/cooling and electricity as part of the infrastructure currently being planned for the City’s imminent 550-acre sustainability precinct. The downtown waterfront area precinct will include the sustainable Southeast False Creek (SEFC) neighbourhood, the Great Northern Way Campus (academic consortium of University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, Emily Carr Institute and British Columbia Institute of Technology) and the 2010 Winter Olympics Athletes’ Village - roughly 1.6 million square metres (m2) of development in the next 15 years. The two-phase study will begin with a technical feasibility analysis of an integrated heat utility and a mico-grid electricity system followed by a business and socioeconomic analysis to provide the basis for a strategic business case for the integrated heat utility. Based on conservative assumptions, buildings within the sustainable community energy system could achieve 20 to 30 per cent energy savings over a business-as-usual approach. The City also estimates that the following annual GHG emission reductions could result from the establishment of the proposed system when compared to a business-as-usual approach: 5,400 tonnes of CO2e per year by 2010, 28,400 tonnes of CO2e per year by 2015.