Hammarby Sjöstad is part of the municipality of Stockholm, however little serious thought was given to the development until more than a decade later when it became a strategic asset for Stockholm in its bid for the 2004 Olympics. The pitch to the Olympic committee was to provide the first environmental Olympic village while at the same time showcasing Swedish leadership in community design and environmental performance. (www.hammarbysjostad.se)
 
Unfortunately for Stockholm the 2004 Summer Olympics were awarded to Athens but the legacy of the Hammarby complex is tremendous and continues to live on. Having visited Hammarby in 2009, I was immediately struck by the depth of thought given to community features; designed to make life more comfortable, livable, cost effective, and environmentally friendly for its inhabitants.
 
The community’s main environmental goal was a 50% reduction in energy and water usage, and Hagströms integrated community plan called for a closed-loop or circular system with respect to energy, water, and waste resources.

At the heart of the complex of modern buildings and tree-lined Hammarby streets, sits a glass building appropriately named GlashusEtt – Hammarby’s community environmental information centre. There both residents and visitors are able to access real-time information on how the community is performing on its energy and environmental metrics. There are games for kids, information that wows adults, and practical features such as the mobile phone return bin - helping to make sure that the rare earth metals in Hammarby’s mobile phones are a part of Europe's Circular Economy. All of the activities at GlashusEtt serve to educate, engage and reinforce behaviour modification not just on an individual unit basis, but also for the community as a whole.

Having seen the Envac system in operation, its inherent logic has been apparent to me since early 2009. What excites me is how this thinking could be easily be applied to many other communities here in North America or elsewhere.

For example, just as Canada Post prepares to adopt community centralized mail delivery, and the beer industry has been licencing production for decades; it seems entirely possible to do the same with our recyclables. Communities could easily centralize recycling returns into a nodal distribution network; requiring fewer truck trips into residential neighbourhoods, reducing costs for communities, pollution, and noise while at the same time increasing traffic safety.

The whole point here is that communities are a huge opportunity to create a more integrated and evolved design approach instead of the alternative, which is all too often a seriously underperforming patchwork of outdated supply and distribution mechanisms.

The Envac logic works especially well in the case of food waste and other green bin yard waste. Clearly, the most sustainable use of food and other organic waste is to compost it on your own property and in doing so receive the benefits of the fresh nutrient rich soil, for your own use. Your plants will thank you for a blanket of leaves and soil to keep them warm in the winter, and they will reward you in the summer with larger fruit, flowers, and green leaves for having the benefit of the additional soil for root growth and nutrient uptake.

The whole concept of “trucking” food waste seems entirely unsustainable, and costly from a number of perspectives. If instead of trucking away food waste and other organics, might it not be a better solution to develop nodal community composting centres instead?

Nodal or decentralized distribution is a basic tenant of Sustainability. The perfect example to conceptualize how this could work would be a cul-de-sac, where the smaller nodal system serves that particular neighbourhood. In the centre of a cul-de-sac there could sit a beautiful park-like space which in it's midst lives the community compost. Compost offers a number of other features in addition to nutrient rich soil, including heat. Here is a great video on what is possible with your own compost: http://bit.ly/13ooGYk

If cities were to set up their own community compost areas in conjuction with community gardens this could be a terrific long-term replicable model for communiites worldwide. Why? Well for starters:

  1) Community members would have access to clean soil created in the local community.
  2) Depending on the size and number of compost locations this organization could create                    a number of long-term stable organic agriculture jobs within cities; as either city                              employees, or perhaps organized as community non-profits.                                                         3) Huge environmental savings; reduced air pollution, noise, and landfill concerns.                           4) Financial savings to communities in terms of fuel, and vehicle expenditures.                                 5) Increased efficiency and community productivity of the road systems by removing vehicles              that impede traffic flow.                                                                                                                   6) Potential for seriously increased profitability for the waste companies as they will be hauling           fully loaded trucks, resulting in less stop/start wear and tear on their vehicles, reduced liability         as the company drivers are not put in challenging or difficult maneuvering situations, and they         could also potentially bid on the community compost facilities as a contractor. All to say that           there are tremendous financial, social, and ecological reasons for adopting new and innovative       ways to handling waste streams. 

Charting a course for the future
The conference attracted many high profile speakers including; QUEST chair and former BC Premier Michael Harcourt, Ian Gillespie - President of Westbank Projects Corp, and BC Minister of Environment Mary Polak who spoke on the topic of British Columbia: a Leader in Smart Energy Communities.
 
The luncheon address delivered by Minister Polak encouraged the marriage of business and the environment, highlighting areas for better communication and the facilitation of a deeper understanding of the dynamics of the British Columbia economy. Braving difficult subject matter Minister Polak expounded on the need to strike a balance between economic and environmental considerations and shared the government’s vision for transformation of the BC economy saying: 

                                                  "We have the choice to be involved,
                                                  to drive innovation,
                                                  or let other countries do it.
                                                  Do we become leaders,
                                                  or vacate the field?"
 
By using some of the provinces vast reserves of LNG as a transition fuel, Minister Polak suggested that the is decision is not simply between right and wrong, but rather a tough decision between right and right with the solution being to "collectively" find the pathway forward.

Project Showcase: Snapshots of Five Innovative Projects that are Driving Smart Energy Communities Forward.

The QUEST Project Showcase segment highlighted real world examples of smart buildings and smart cities. Ranging from tower developments to biomass fueled district energy systems, many BC companies are helping to bring the smart city concept home to Vancouver.
 
Clint Undseth, VP Corporate Development for Canem Systems was the first Project Showcase panel speaker. A proponent for measuring and demonstrating environmental and profitability improvements Undseth cited reputational brand value studies to back up the assertion that consumers purchase from companies who are both environmental and cost conscious leaders.
 

Undseth underscored the value of the Canem Centre for Building Innovation to the industry as a whole saying; "we help construction companies manage “millions of lines of data” and go far beyond the idea of an electrical contractor. We're like the brain for your building; we integrate Information management, building system integration, green data centres, energy management, security & risk management, and lifecycle services into the science of measuring and demonstrating building performance results.
 

Information analytics are a key component in making information meaningful for project stakeholders. By using the collaborative framework of the Integrated Design Approach, Undseth believes there’s a massive opportunity for industry wide improvement. He says “by using common language and an Integrated Design Process we can bring together systems, people, and processes, to clearly show the financial benefits that accrue to companies willing to adopt this methodology. All-in-all we're able to lower operating costs, improve comfort for building inhabitants which leads to better talent attraction and retention, and superior environmental performance."  
 
One of Canem’s current projects "Telus Garden" is a LEED Platinum - 22 story office tower, and LEED Gold - 48 story residential tower in downtown Vancouver. Scheduled for completion in 2015, this building is set to seriously outperform the current building stock boasting 10,000 square feet of green roofs, two roof forests, and 80% of primary heating energy coming from the buildings existing systems.
 
Undseth says; “To accelerate the adoption of Integrated Community Energy Solutions and to establish and realize performance targets, we need corporate stakeholders to align Energy and Environmental Management with Corporate Strategy as opposed to being a support activity.”
 
Undseth believes that “Sustainability is just SMART BUSINESS” and that breaking through the “We’ve always done it this way” thinking, will lead the Canadian construction industry into a new era of financial and environmental success. For more information on the Canem Centre for Building Innovation see: www.canem.com

The project showcase also saw Arne Sandin, from Bizcat share information on their energy management work in Christchurch, New Zealand: http://bit.ly/1E1nhbe  As well as Lynn Meuller from International Wastewater Systems, spoke in detail about his company's sewage heat recovery project at the Richmond Gateway Theatre: http://bit.ly/13TGR9s 

image credit: UNBC.

The first phase of the energy projects helped UNBC earn this recognition; further phases are building on the initiative. First a wood pellet boiler was installed to heat the forestry research centre greenhouse. Students were involved in analysis of “fuel inputs, energy outputs, air emissions and ash generated by the boiler”. The second phase was the installation of a larger version in a district energy system, which was used to heat most of the campus buildings.
 
UNBC used a Nexterra biomass boiler gasification system, which was able to replace “85% of the natural gas with biomass-based heating”.
 
According to Claus further research has been done to extend the district heating system to include residences on campus. The residence buildings are currently heated with a combination of electric baseboard heaters and natural gas furnaces. Initial calculations show that approximately 50% of the buildings energy could be supplied by the expansion of the district energy system. For more on UNBC visit: www.unbc.ca
 
Implementation Accelerators:
Quest 2014 held three Implementation accelerators

                                                  Implementing Community Energy Plans
                                                  Smart Energy for Northern, Remote, and Rural Communities
                                                  Energy Solutions for Existing Building Stock

Gordon Van Tighem, member of NWT Public Utilities Board, and Paul Austin, Regional Director, Partnerships at Sustainable Development Technology Canada ("SDTC") spoke to a crowded room at the Smart Energy for Northern, Remote, and Rural Communities accelerator break-out session. 

Van Tighem, gave numerous examples of communities partnering with territorial governments and shared environmental while Paul Austin gave the audience an overview of SDTC; A not-for-profit foundation established in 2001 by the Government of Canada, SDTC fosters "timely diffusion of clean technologies" throught the funding of "innovative products or services that reduce financial and environmental costs while driving better performance." Since its inception SDTC has funded: