Canada Leads North America with Sustainable Communities

The system that links the community together is ingenious. It stores the summer months’ excess energy underground for it to be put to use in the extremely cold winter months that Alberta is notorious for. A total of 800 solar panels located on garage roofs throughout the community generate 1.5 megawatts of thermal power during a typical summer day, the project’s organizers say.

DLSC's underground energy storage system is unique in the world. Dubbed the Borehole Thermal Energy Storage(BTES), the unit links all the newly built, single detached homes together. The rest of the building efforts have been as green as possible and the entire community has been awarded gold-certified status under the Built Green Alberta program. That program in turn is modeled on NRCan’s EnerGuide for New Houses Program. All of them have rear garages separated from the houses via a breezeway. The best news is of course the low carbon footprint of the people that occupy the houses. A typical household will generate only  1 to 2 tonnes of greenhouse gas annually, compared to an average Canadian footprint of around 6 to 7 tonnes per home a year.

A wide range of sustainable alternatives - such as those related to land use, food and fibre production, shelter, energy generation and conservation, water and waste management, and recycling are featured in the 4 key activities of this project: the Eco-centre, Outreach and Education, Community Action, and the Eco-Village.

We believe that sustainability will become the dominant issue of the 21st century. Our society needs to develop ways of living that are economically viable and socially just which do not at the same time destroy the ecological base that sustains us and all other life on the planet. The Town and the Rural Municipality of Craik therefore, have embarked on a joint long-term project in search of ways of living that address the issue of sustainability and rural revitalization through physical demonstration of viable solutions.

With the Ecovillage, PEDCO aims to achieve the highest possible score on the internationally recognized LEED scale of green construction. While the project will not be fully energy neutral upon completion, it will reduce normal water usage by 50 per cent and energy usage by 70 per cent. The project will also be developed to be net-zero compatible, meaning that it will be designed to more easily incorporate a full solar hookup and other green technologies in the future. Another focal point of the development will be promoting population density, which, according to PEDCO chair Rick Olmstead, is the key to sustainable urban development.