Email dated December 5, 2023 from the View Royal Climate Coalition, Re: Rezoning Application for 339, 341 and 345 Island Highway

Elena Bolster

Subject: FW: 339, 341, 345 Island Highway and our stance on Zero Carbon

From: Jane Devonshire
Sent: Tuesday, December 5, 2023 12:34 PM
To: Info Address info@viewroyal.ca
Subject: Re: 339, 341, 345 Island Highway and our stance on Zero Carbon

Dear Mayor and Council,

In 2023, View Royal Council:

Signed onto the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty
Signed onto the class action lawsuit for Sue Big Oil
Adopted the EL4 Zero Carbon Step Codes to align with Victoria and Saanich

The Town’s Community Climate Action Strategy and Community Energy and Greenhouse Gas Emissions Plan prioritizes a low-carbon approach and a reduction in GHG emissions in new buildings. By achieving these policy objectives, the Town is accelerating the implementation of the Province’s Zero Carbon Step Code.

From Page 48 of the CCAS

Step Up New Buildings: Enhance energy efficiency and low carbon heating in new buildings

Overview View Royal’s population is growing rapidly, and every new building built to minimum code standards and using fossil fuels for heating is a lost opportunity for improved energy efficiency, reduced carbon emissions, one more building that will have to be retrofitted down the road. While existing buildings generate the majority of building-related greenhouse gas emissions, new construction is still very important for reducing emissions.

Fully electric buildings are doable and are already being built in the CRD. Examples:

The Rotunda is one of many buildings in Victoria that uses a ground source heat pump.
Ravens Crossing Sidney: How a Community Went All-Electric | b2electrification.org
Chown Place in the Burnside Gorge neighbourhood just off Harriet
Harris Green’s 25+ story building going all electric

The Boardwalk developer is proposing a shared tempered water source serviced by a natural gas fired boiler to create baseline heat, as well as a plant chiller to provide cooling. We were told it was a bit of a complicated system and fairly expensive to install but are some of the most efficient they have come across.

After receiving some professional advice on this, we countered with this: We do not believe there is any technical reason natural gas is required for this system as described. For example, the tempered water source could be heated with renewable energy using another heat pump, a ground-source heat pump, or even just electric resistance, or each of the buildings could have separate heat pump systems, eliminating the need for the common tempered water source.

We believe that maximum efficiency with fossil fuels is worse for climate impacts than medium efficiency with renewable energy. While you've designed a clever system that is very energy efficient and reduces operational costs, it remains a significant carbon polluter. We need to be clear that the goal of the Town and the community is to reduce GHGs now and to prevent new developments from increasing GHGs into the future. While efficiency is an important part of that, carbon emission reductions should come first. Likely the easiest low carbon change for this project would be to switch to independent systems for each of the buildings even though this will mean losing some energy efficiency. This is far preferable to the mounting costs of severe weather events like atmospheric rivers and forest fires that result from continuing to heat up our planet with methane gas. Methane is 86 times more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas.

Methane leaks from every point from extraction to the combustion end point in our buildings and is detrimental to our health.

At its core this project as described to us, runs contrary to all that View Royal has been trying to achieve this past year, with our GHG reduction targets as outlined in our Community Climate Action Strategy, and demonstrated by council’s resounding support for the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty and the EL4 Zero Carbon Step Code.

The ask tonight from the View Royal Climate Coalition has to be in all good conscience, that council not support this project, or any such project that takes us backwards in our climate goals.

Respectfully yours,
The VRCC Core Team,
Linda Jeaurond, Ian Brown, Roz Isaac, Jane Devonshire