Speak Up Winnipeg

High Energy

Ian Hall

May 7 2009

2 Comments.

The amount and source of energy used by the world is going to change. It has to. It will change for a variety of reasons: some under our control – like getting serious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions (which may lead to some kind of carbon taxation scheme), and others not under our control – like a dwindling supply of oil and natural gas (which will also mean prices may increase substantially).

Many of us who have grown up in Canada, in a city, may be inclined to take energy for granted. You plug in your lamp, or appliance, or TV and it turns on. You switch on your furnace or boiler and – presto – your home is warm. You pull up to the pump and fill up. Sure, the bills may have gone up over the years, but reliable and relatively affordable energy is always available. I say “relatively affordable” knowing that energy poverty is a real and growing problem. But imagine if our entire City, our entire society lived in a state of energy poverty…. How would the end of reliable and affordable energy affect you? How would it affect our city?

A number of authors, planners and futurists have speculated on the question. In his latest edited volume, Carbon Shift, Thomas Homer Dixon suggests that the end of the oil age is near and that oil depletion and climate change will have a massive, massive impact on the future not only of cities but on civilization. In a recent talk in Winnipeg, Homer Dixon suggested that one of the challenges of transitioning to new kinds of energy is that oil and coal are such rich energy sources (for example, 3 tablespoons of gasoline is the equivalent energy of an entire human’s day of labour) that it’s hard to replace them “one for one” with renewable energy sources, at least using conventional technologies. I left the talk feeling like we need to get smarter about how we use energy, especially our best energy, including the remaining oil left on the planet. Maybe we should be using it to build windmills, solar energy systems, sea walls for our rising oceans and green building components instead of, I don’t know… other stuff.

James Howard Kunstler (why do these fellows always have three names?) suggests that future energy challenges will mean that “…our big cities will contract, not grow. The fortunate ones will densify at their old centers and waterfronts, but overall the trend will be severe shrinkage, really a reversal of the 200-year-long demographic movement of people from farms and small towns to mega cities.” Not only will cities shrink, but their form will change. Kuntsler predicts that “...zoning laws and land use codes… will simply be ignored. We’ll return to traditional modes of inhabiting the landscape by default, as it were, because we’ll no longer have the choice of doing it 20th century style.”

So how will cities change as a result of energy changes? Are we hostage to our gas furnaces; powered machines and factories; our gasoline powered cars? Can we shape our future? How?

This is also a question that’s been given considerable thought. Natural Resources Canada is working on a project right now that looks at the connection between land use patterns and energy use. The results they found in their first case study in Whitehorse are interesting – a typical home in one neighbourhood uses nearly 50% more energy than one in another neighbourhood. Meanwhile, the Canadian Urban Institute recently completed a very interesting project in Calgary that looked at community energy mapping (link goes to large PDF report). Basically, the project asked the question, what would it take for Calgary’s built environment (buildings) to achieve a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions below 2005 levels by 2050. The results were surprising: drastic building energy performance improvements helped, but also (and it should be noted that much of Calgary’s electricity is generated by coal-fired power plants) big changes to where and how energy is generated. New integrated community energy systems, many of which are local in scale, are seen as necessary for Calgary to achieve it’s energy and greenhouse gas reduction goals.

Because of the pressures I mentioned earlier, changes to how we source and use energy will increasingly cease to be choices; eventually they will become requirements. Knowing when and how to plan for these changes (choices at the moment) is an exciting challenge. Manitoba Hydro is already well down the road of energy conservation and is working on new energy technologies, but how should the City of Winnipeg work with, and in some cases even beyond, these programs? How should governments and utilities work together to ensure sustainability, including maintaining quality of life and economic competitiveness?

Here's the roundtable thoughts on the future of green energy from the Mayor's Symposium.

See More: Sustainability; City Building

I think it's important for Winnipeg to consider energy use in long-term planning. If the City is serious about taking on sustainability, let's look and how we use land and how we build on it. A more carbon-constrained society will see denser mixed-use development, better transit and more opportunities for active transportation.

But these issues can't be looked at in isolation, and planning with energy in mind will help to bring a more holistic view to the table. That's exactly what this city needs.

nonny maus May 8, 2009 at 8:12 AM