Community Energy Planning From the Ground Up: Developing an Integrated Energy Plan

Community Energy Planning and Green Urbanism initiatives have been embraced by governing bodies to reduce their carbon footprint and achieve energy security. Although authorities have embraced ideal visions of sustainability, they have largely been unable to achieve their goals. In this paper, I begin by examining the different aspects of Green Urbanism and how it can be implemented at different scales. Next, I examine the process known as Community Energy Planning and how it can be used as a tool to achieve energy democracy. This requires a comprehensive analysis of existing legislation with respect to energy management and sustainable development in Ontario. My analysis reveals that existing sustainable guidelines and energy conservation initiatives are most often voluntary programs, vaguely outlined, and often subject to misinterpretation. This results in a gap between planning and implementation that hinders the development of low-carbon communities. In seeking to identify the underlying issues, I analyze how the influences of neoliberalism pose considerable barriers for the effective implementation of CEP. Next, I examine six case studies where community power projects have successfully been implemented in Europe, Central America, and Canada in order to identify alternative models. I identify several challenges in Ontario in terms of replicating these models and using CEP as a way forward to achieve green urbanism. Common issues include high upfront capital costs, high risk, lack of technical knowledge and experience, and legal and regulatory barriers. Lastly, as a way of addressing these issues, I present key considerations towards integrating energy management and land use planning processes in order to formulate more holistic approaches, from a bottom-up and community-driven approach, towards achieving energy democracy and green urbanism ideals in Ontario.