So what exactly are Integrated Community Energy Solutions? ICES is an approach to use new and existing infrastructure more efficiently and effectively by taking advantage of cross-sectoral opportunities in the areas of land use, building, water, transportation, and waste. The goal of ICES is to curb energy demand and reduce GHG emissions, while increasing energy security, enhancing the quality of life and realizing financial benefits.

Its really about taking a holistic approach to development and redevelopment at a block, neighbourhood, or even community-wide scale. Toronto’s Regent Park revitalization is a good example. Not only are the new buildings going up in the neighbourhood highly energy efficient, but the redevelopment also includes a district energy system which will provide affordable, low-carbon heating, cooling and electricity to thousands of neighbourhood residents. The goal is not to take the community “off the grid”, but rather to make it a sustainable node within the grid. This will both miminize costs within the community, while also benefiting the broader public by minimizing the need to invest in expensive — and difficult to site — new centralized generation facilities and transmission corridors.

So how do we make integrated community energy solutions the rule rather than exception? Learning from each others successes — and failures — is the first step, and the growing QUEST network is driving this knowledge sharing process. But we also need new tools and regulatory reforms. The QUEST Ontario Caucus meeting highlighted a few specific ideas:

1. Provincial clarification that energy improvements constitute a public benefit and can therefore be financed by Local Improvement Charges and other similar financing tools. We can’t reasonably expect developers to bear the full cost of district energy systems that will benefit building owners/residents, municipal governments, and the general public for the next 50 years. We need financing tools that spread the costs — and benefits – over time and space in a way which is fair & equitable.
2. Reform of the planning and development process: Cities need to be confident that they can hold new developments to high standards of sustainability without fear of having their decisions overturned unreasonably. In this vein, Toronto City Council recently asked the Province to abolish the Ontario Municipal Board, but reform is probably a more likely — and arguably better — outcome.
3. Increased Provincial support for natural gas conservation. The Province has put significant resources into both electricity conservation and renewable electricity generation, with impressive results. But with natural gas used for space and water heating responsible for a much, much larger share of GHG emissions, we desparately need the same level of support for conserving natural gas or converting to renewable heat sources (eg. geothermal and solar thermal). This was highlighted in a recent report from the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario.

Of course, others would disagree with these suggestions, or highlight other priorities. Let us know what you think, and join the QUEST for integrated community energy solutions!

University of Waterloo’s Institute for Sustainable Energy just released the Equinox Blueprint: Energy 2030, with recommendations for how to meet the world’s energy demand in a sustainable, de-carbonized manner.  Their press release highlights, in this order:  

- energy storage

- “enhanced” and “advanced” geothermal and nuclear

- off-grid solar electricity and “self-sustaining” micro-grids

- smart cities

-  electric transport

The article dedicates 99% of the coverage to the flashy electricity generation ideas.  The 3^rd last sentence says “Finally, the Equinox thinkers want to see cities re-engineered for better energy efficiency.” 

Poor Cinderella.  Energy efficiency is hard-working, offers the biggest, fastest and cheapest way to a sustainable energy future, and can help pay for some of the more expensive supply-side options.  Would be nice to see an article that starts with: First and foremost, the thinkers want to see super-energy efficient buildings, factories and transportation systems, so that renewable sources of energy can meet the demand.

My inbox has been filled to the brim with announcements, stories and celebrations. There was this great piece in the Toronto Star about The Agenda’s Steve Paikin loving his Chevy Volt; the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) recognizing the Mitsubishi iMiEV as #1 on their “Greenest Vehicle List“; and the Toronto District School Board has featured their ecoFleet plan right on their front page.

A great week, indeed.

It’s important to tell these stories of leadership and accomplishment. These help to counteract the predominantly negative messages that have played out in the media about high prices, range anxiety, and safety concerns. That said, both the positive and negative stories need to be balanced with the ‘real’ stories.

As part of our FleetWise EV300 initiative, TAF is working with public and private fleets from the across the Greater Toronto Area to tell their story. With over 60 EVs on the road, we are starting our in-service performance monitoring to capture the real-time data on how these plug-in vehicles are performing in real-world conditions. With this impartial data, we’ll be able to tell the story that is still waiting to be told: what is the real business and environmental case for EVs?

We want to tell the story of when it’s right to use an EV, when it’s not, and what impact this will have on driving down emissions.  By asking the right questions and using our suite of tools to get the answers, we are supporting data-driven decision making and working with our partners to tell their story.

Good or bad, it’s a story that needs to be told.

Rahul Bhardwaj, President and CEO of the Toronto Community Foundation told us he’d been grinning all week thinking about the “poo-tential” of winning venture ZooShare Biogas Co-operative which will turn zoo animal waste and grocery store green waste into clean energy. ZooShare received TCF’s Green Innovation Award in the amount of $40,000 while fresh new thinkers from Young Urban Farmers were awarded $10,000 to bootstrap their efforts to put local Toronto back-yards into food production.

The Toronto Atmospheric Fund announced our recent decision to support Summerhill Impact’s Shuttle program to support reduced car travel with a grant of $150,000 over two years, and to provide bridge financing to ZooShare in the amount of $250,000.

The party ended too early when an emergency situation at street level required the whole party to vacate the building. Unfazed, guests proceeded to the nearby Pilot Tavern to continue networking.

Check out the ClimateSpark documentary film and more news about follow-on activities at climatespark.ca

For another perspective on the event and the Challenge, check out a great post at SocialFinance.ca

Join the Canadian Urban Institute and a panel of expert speakers on February 10th to learn more about emerging trends that have the potential to re-set the dial on infrastructure development.  

Keynote speaker: Tom Rand, author of “How to Kick the Fossil Fuel Habit,” venture capitalist and CleanTech Advisor to MaRS

 Session chair: Sean L. Gosnell, Partner, Borden Ladner Gervais LLP

 With commentary from an expert panel, including:

 - Phil Jessup, practice leader, The Climate Group, responsible for the Toronto Atmospheric Fund’s Lightsavers program and the roll-out of climate-friendly infrastructure in three continents.

 - David Klacko, Associate, Borden Ladner Gervais LLP, practices administrative law, with an emphasis on land use planning and development matters, land acquisition and municipal law.

 - Tim Dettlaff, Senior Vice President, Ameresco, a full service Asset Sustainability company responding to the needs of the MUSH sector by addressing the aging infrastructure challenges faced today.

 - Eleanor McAteer, Project Director, Tower Renewal Program, City of Toronto and Board Member, Canada Green Building Council – GTA Chapter

Click here for full details and registration.

This innovation will allow more lenders to offer more and better financing options to condominium corporations (a.k.a. Strata Corporations) across the country.  As a result, more condos will be able to leverage their greatest asset — the equity in their building — in order to make smart investments in the future of their community.

Borrowing money to finance energy upgrades can be a great strategy for many buildings. While condo corps maintain a reserve fund for major capital projects, the reserve fund plan is usually based on keeping the existing equipment as long as possible, and replacing it with the cheapest equipment available on the market. Replacing energy-wasting equipment early, with high-efficiency equipment and controls, often requires additional resources. More often than not, a loan can be structured such that the energy savings are greater than the loan repayment costs, making the whole project cash flow neutral – or even positive – from day one.

A number of lenders will now provide financing to condominium corporations — including the Toronto Atmospheric Fund. To find out more about TAF’s financing program, click here.

The Challenge itself was divided into three parts: ClimateSpark Ignite, an online crowd-sourcing call for ideas, which attracted 61 proposals and more than 2,000 online community members who debated the merits of the ideas presented; ClimateSpark Accelerate, a venture-development bootcamp with custom-designed mentoring sessions for each of the ten Ignite round winners (check out some video snapshots of participants); and ClimateSpark Launch, where the winners get to pitch the combined group of foundations and investors.  This is all capped out with a Gala celebration on Feb. 7^th where the winner of the Toronto Community Foundation’s $50,000 Green Innovation Award will be announced.  (This is a great networking event for anyone interested in social ventures and/or climate action and tickets are just $35).

So what do the answers look like to the questions posed by the Challenge?  Very diverse, for starters – the winners represent everything from a “goods sharing service” to a “low carbon condominium” that emphasizes housing affordability.  Ideas ranged in development from very “back of the envelope” to in-the-market and well established.

But quantifying actual carbon emissions reduction potential was probably the toughest piece for all the proponents – it’s an aspect of business planning most ventures have little experience with. That might change quickly if we saw an actual price on carbon (e.g,. Ontario ever does introduce carbon cap and trade through, for example, its commitment to the Western Climate Initiative) and greenhouse gas reductions became a real commodity that could help to support social ventures.

Meanwhile, be sure to join us on Feb. 7^th to celebrate some innovative climate solutions in our own backyard.

Susheela Ramachandran

ClimateSpark SVC Coordinator

The workshop content represents a stream of thinking that believes a designer’s sensibility and a systems approach can be applied to creating meaningful dialogues just as well as it applies to industrial or graphic design. A related idea is “design thinking” which considers how the design process can support collaboration across different disciplines. I believe that these approaches are useful tools in the development of truly sustainable cities – and critical to tapping into the ideas and talents needed to address the challenges climate change will bring.

Last night’s participants included design and architecture students and professionals, communications and consulting professionals, professors, artists and people from the environmental and health sectors. The workshop was led by David Ing, a 27-year veteran of IBM and current president of the International Society for the Systems Sciences. David walked us through some tools and techniques to help shape a dialogue, like the “ignorance map” (what we know, what we don’t know, and what we think we know but don’t ….) and a crash course on a 400-year evolution of the methods of inquiry. Then we proceeded into small groups to try out the concepts.

The groups grappled with designing ways to talk about topics as diverse as how to define the value of water, how to help people identify their own creativity, how to inspire long-term-thinking and how to curate art in virtual space. We discovered how hard it is to talk about how to talk about something, without actually talking about it.

It was refreshing to be part of the workshop last night, and a key reflection I took away is about how much talking we engage in leads to so little change. So – let’s stop the idle chatter and get on with some meaningful dialogue – and to do it, let’s design first, and talk later.

It’s pretty obvious that how people use buildings affects how much energy building use. The latest ACEEE study takes a look at how programs designed to change user behaviour influences energy use. http://aceee.org/research-report/b121  This has been a popular topic lately because everyone knows about the little heaters under the desk, windows propped open, multiplying gizmos plugged in, and is looking for ‘easy’ ways to address energy use and ways to avoid ‘rebouding’ energy use after a retrofit.

What caught my eye was that three out of the five programs examined are Canadian. And, the one in Toronto – the University Health Network’s TLC-Care to Conserve initiative – was funded by Toronto Atmospheric Fund. Through a marketing and engagement program, UHN set expectations for all hospital staff – including management, medical professionals, operations and maintenance – to be involved in saving energy.

Behavioural changes reduced energy use by 4.2% by the second year, and the program continues. Energy audits and equipment replacement was also done in tandem. With savings of over $2 million per year, that’s pretty good leverage for TAF’s initial grant to start the program.

One question that many building owners considering solar have been asking is “will solar panels increase my property taxes?” Until recently, the answer hasn’t been entirely clear.

Last week, the Province answered that question with an emphatic “No”. On January 4, 2012, Ontario Regulation 282/98 under the Assessment Act was amended to clarify that neither the  property assessment nor the property tax classification for buildings will change due to the installation of rooftop renewable energy systems. A number of related amendments provide preferential treatment for ground-mounted renewable energy systems as well.

So while installing solar PV won’t get you a break on your property taxes, it won’t drive them up higher the next time your property is assessed. This is important, as otherwise an increase in the property assessment might eat up up to 10% of the revenue from a rooftop solar array.

Good news for urban solar!