Providing professional planners with the tools and strategies to effectively pursue community energy pathways will play a central role in energy conscious cities of the future.
Many Canadian communities are doing this already. The City of Guelph, for example, created the Guelph Community Energy Plan in 2007 – the first of its kind in North America.Since then, the development of community energy plans has evolved substantially across the country. Today, cities and towns across Ontario have initiated change. But the most effective community energy planning comes at the early stages of development.
This is why York University’s Faculty of Environmental Studies, in collaboration with Karen Farbridge – former mayor of Guelph – QUEST Canada and the Ontario Climate Consortium, created The Energy Conscious Community: An Energy Planning Course for Planning Professionals. First offered as a pilot in June of 2019, the course was such a resounding success that it is now in its second offering.
“The response to the first offering of the course made it clear we were meeting a critical need among planners and municipal staff looking to respond to the challenges of integrating energy and climate change considerations into their planning processes” said Mark Winfield, Professor and Co-Chair of York University’s Sustainable Energy Initiative.
By investigating in system integration, stakeholder engagement, community benefits and implementation strategies, this course is a support tool for professional planners in their central role of integrating climate change and energy considerations into their planning processes.
The next course will be offered February 20th and 21st, 2020.
For more details and to register click here
