Port Coquitlam's energy management program is already seeing some success and the city is on its way to achieving its goal of reducing greenhouse gases by 20% by 2017.
Chris Gardner, the city's manager of facility services, said staff are looking at a range of ways the city can reduce its energy consumption, from encouraging employees to turn off lights and computer monitors when leaving a room to conducting major lighting and heating upgrades at large civic facilities.
"Our focus has been the larger centres, which are the higher energy users for us, such as the PoCo recreation complex and Hyde Creek," he said. "We have identified key projects but we are continuing with the business analysis of them right now before we finalize and implement."
Many of the projects focus on lighting upgrades.
So far, the city has upgraded the lighting at the blue arena of the rec complex, the Hyde Creek gym and the truck bays of its two fire halls. LED lighting has also been introduced at the new Heritage Centre at Leigh Square and a heating plant upgrade had been completed at Hyde Creek.
The efforts, according to a city staff report, mean an energy savings that could power 12 homes for one year and offset the greenhouse gas emissions of 19 passenger vehicles for a year.
But Gardner said upgrades to improve energy efficiency have to be able to pay for themselves.
"If it doesn't make good business sense, we don't proceed with a project," he said. "[We] put it aside for future consideration."
More lighting projects are expected to be completed this year, including one at city hall. Staff also want to replace the underwater pool lighting at Hyde Creek with high-efficiency bulbs and improve the efficiency of lighting at the Gathering Place and Outlet as well as the green arena at the rec complex.
The capital improvements will cost $293,563 but a staff report said that the combined energy savings of $55,196 annually mean a payback in just over four and a half years.
