Improve the Reliability of Electricity Supply in Your Buildings

In the summer of 2021, places in B.C. broke temperature records and BC Hydro experienced 19 of its top 25 all-time summer daily peak demand records[1].

The weather caused concern for British Columbians around the availability of increased electrical supply during extreme weather events. In a survey conducted by BC Hydro, 76% of respondents said they are concerned about the reliability of their electricity supply because of climate change. [2]

While our electrical utilities are working diligently to continually increase the reliability and supply of electricity, the onus is also on us as building owners, managers, and consultants to act within the facilities we work with to be better prepared. That said, balancing electrical demand requirements with energy conservation and decarbonization goals, asset renewal, occupant comfort, safety, and climate resilience in our facilities can be a daunting task.

To help break this down into bite-size pieces, Faisal Emami, one of our Electrical Engineers, offers an approach that we apply to many of the facilities we work with at Prism.

1. Review your utility data
   ▪ Look at your historical data for demand peaks to better understand your situation. Platforms such as PUMA make this particularly easy and insightful
2. Assess your current situation
   ▪ Conduct a facility condition assessment to review the condition, capacity, and remaining asset life of your building systems. Pay particular attention to your current electrical service and identify where your bottleneck in capacity is.
3. Determine your future electrical capacity needs
   ▪ Consider future requirements for EV charging, electrification of HVAC systems, and increased cooling needs during extreme weather events.
4. Free up spare electrical capacity using demand side management (DSM)▪
   ▪ Minimize waste and maximize efficiency in your existing systems to reduce consumption and lower peak electrical demand requirements.
   ▪ Energy audits and recommissioning can be great places to start to help identify ways to do this.
5. Assess opportunities for energy supply resiliency
   ▪ Alternative power sources such as solar photovoltaics and power banks may be good options for reducing your reliance on a single point of supply.
6. Develop an implementation plan
   ▪ The plan should balance the outcomes of the previous steps with asset renewal and emissions targets.
   ▪  Develop a phased approach to upgrade your electrical service to allow for security of supply as we move into the future.
   ▪  Seek incentive funding support where available to help with studies, plans, and upgrades.

If this approach sounds like something your facilities could benefit from, reach out to us and our Electrical team will be happy to work with you to identify your needs and provide customized recommendations. Contact us to learn more.

How do we change for the better? At Prism, we think about this every day.

For us, change means many things. We are known for our work supporting clients with building system improvements and energy efficiency projects. We also support change by helping our clients develop plans and programs that provide a roadmap for improving sustainability performance or reducing energy or emissions over the long term.

We also think about change in terms of our own company’s growth. With over three decades of experience, we know the value of building a strong team of individuals that work together to deliver high-value services. One such team is our Sustainability Team, which supports companies and organizations create a greener and more energy-efficient world.

Collectively, the Sustainability Team members leverage each other’s background in strategic planning, facilitation, coaching, change management, communications, training, and stakeholder engagement, to support clients as they work towards their sustainability and strategic energy management goals.

To continue to support our growth in these areas, we have welcomed some very talented and passionate team members over the last few months to the team (above, left to right): Taniell Hamilton, Shannon Hardman, and Nicole Huard.

Change isn’t always easy. It is a process and takes time and effort, therefore, it is essential to remember that small increments collectively create significant impact. It’s more critical now than ever for us to work towards impact– for the benefit of our organizations, communities, and the planet.

Find out how Prism’s Sustainability Team can help you lead lasting change in your organization.

The Clean Building Tax Credit supports the CleanBC commitment to reduce provincewide emissions by 40% from 2007 levels and aligns with B.C.’s target to reduce emissions in buildings and communities by more than half by 2030.

Prism was invited to speak to local media at the Kitsilano Community Center on July 13^th about how we support building owners to retrofit their buildings. The province was making an announcement of a new tax credit that will make energy retrofits for multi-unit residential and commercial buildings more affordable, saving owners 5% on retrofits to help reduce their energy use.

Our president, Robert Greenwald, spoke about the work Prism had completed with the City of Vancouver to retrofit the community centre. The building underwent heat-recovery improvements that nearly eliminated the need for natural gas to heat the facility. It also reduced greenhouse gas emissions by more than 80%.

Damian Stathonikos, president of the Building Owners and Managers Association of B.C. also expressed how the tax credit will help reduce the retrofit cost for building owners and lower energy expenses for tenants.

Selina Robinson, Minister of Finance, acknowledged that the upfront costs of these retrofits can be a challenge for people and the tax credit will help owners invest in cleaner energy retrofits.

George Heyman, Minister of Environment and Climate Change Strategy, shared that “improved energy efficiency means fewer emissions, which is good for our environment and brings our existing building infrastructure closer to net-zero and our climate targets.”

As always, our team is happy to work with you to evaluate your retrofit needs and help you identify any rebates and incentives you can leverage.

Learn more about the tax credit and eligibility criteria.

View the full news release.

Read more about our work with Kitsilano Community Centre.

We are excited to announce the launch of our new website this month!

Following Prism’s 30^th anniversary in 2020 and the start of the global pandemic, it seemed to be a good time to reflect and re-examine how we provide value to our community.

We needed our digital presence to reflect these changes and help us articulate our ability to make an impact and help our clients create a greener, more energy-efficient world

Our service offerings have also expanded from a focus on energy management to integrating more closely with our other specialties including electrical and mechanical engineering, utility monitoring, and sustainability consulting.

You will find an extensive array of projects that we have supported across various sectors and service areas. We continue to take pride in providing quality, innovative and insightful solutions for complex engineering and sustainability situations.

At Prism, we have built and will continue to build a robust resource library to share our knowledge on timely topics related to our fields. You will also find energy calculators to identify levels of efficiency across various systems such as condensing boilers, pumps, motors, etc.

Go ahead and look around. Let us know if there is anything else you’d like to see.

We’d love to hear about your projects and how we might help with your energy-reducing needs.

One of the great things about working as a consultant is the opportunity to be involved in various projects across a diverse range of sectors and settings. In striving to make our planet more sustainable, we take it upon ourselves to share and exchange knowledge and best practices with our peers.

“As an organization, we believe that everyone has a role to play in addressing climate change. The more we can do to empower others through collaboration, the better off we’ll be collectively,” shares Sam Thomas, Director of Marketing, Nelson Branch Manager, and Principal.

Whether it is volunteering on an association board, participating in a steering committee, or mentoring youth on exciting “green careers,” our work outside of client projects enrich knowledge and strengthen the communities we serve.

Ari Spiegel, one of our Energy Engineers and Associates (pictured above on the far left), share that he really enjoys being an active board member of the Association of Energy Engineers (Vancouver Chapter). “We identify relevant issues affecting the energy management industry and work to educate ourselves on the latest trends and technology. It’s rewarding to witness how our events increase our members’ motivation and engagement to make powerful collective change.”

Robert Greenwald, our President, knows that climate change action needs a stronger response from the private sector and not just the public sector. He joined the Catalyst Business Alliance to advocate for actions Prism supports, specifically around CleanBC.

“Our work together as a steering committee included consultations with the provincial government on priority setting and encouraging action on ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) by sharing our stories with members. We knew we made an impact when Minster Heyman expressed that he appreciated our advocacy and that the province is committed to making climate change a priority for the BC government,” Robert expressed.

Education is also a key element in fueling our future talent. Lizz Hodgson, one of our Energy Management Engineers, recently volunteered her time to be a mentor and speak about her career and experiences at the 2022 Green Bricks Futures Career Conference. “I could see how excited the high school students were about the career options and how they can make an impact on the environment. Their engagement was great! It was an inspiring and rewarding experience for me personally and I know I would have loved something like this when I was making education and career choices.”

To reach older audiences at the post-secondary level, Robert has been a member of the Program Advisory Committee for the Sustainable Energy Management Advanced Certificate (SEMAC) program at BCIT since the program’s inception in 2009.

We are always excited to share ideas and challenge each other to go beyond the status quo for action on climate change.

How are you contributing to growing the knowledge base in the industries that you work in?

Share with us here.

With the demand for our services growing in the Okanagan and Southern Interior region, we are proud to announce that our Kelowna office opened for business at the Innovation Centre on Doyle Avenue last week!

We are excited to be providing local support to our existing clients including the City of Kelowna, Interior Health, FortisBC and regional governments. Specifically, our Mechanical Designer, Bartjan Kiers, will be working more closely on mechanical and energy management projects in the region. Nicole Huard, our Sustainability and Climate Action Specialist, will also be working from Kelowna to provide support for climate action and sustainability projects in the region.

If you are travelling in the area or know of anyone that may benefit from our services, feel free to drop by and say hi at 460 Doyle Avenue or email Bart at Bartjank@prismengineering.com.

For many in BC, 2021 was a difficult year. From summer wildfires brought on by high temperatures, drought conditions, and fall flooding from extreme rain events, the impacts of a changing climate were all around us and more evident than ever. While disaster response and remediation are essential, they are also short-term, reactive solutions.

As we begin 2022 and look now to the future, climate science tells us that such extreme weather events and the hazards that go with them are likely to persist and increase in frequency and severity. So, what are we to do? We must learn to adapt. We must increase our resilience to climate change hazards through a proactive, not reactive, approach while simultaneously working to reduce emissions so that the long-term effects of climate change are reduced.

So, what is Low Carbon Resilience and why do we need it?

An organization works towards low carbon resilience when it chooses to pursue climate change mitigation and adaptation simultaneously, while also considering the co-benefits of each. Climate change mitigation work seeks to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and prevent climate change. Climate change adaptation work seeks to respond to the impacts of climate change. For buildings, this means working to reduce a facility’s vulnerability to current and future climate change hazards such as extreme rain events, flooding, high temperatures and forest fires.

Historically, these two areas of work, mitigation and adaptation, have often been siloed and worked on either by different parts of an organization or at different points in time through separate planning processes. But there are many advantages to pursuing them simultaneously.

Advantages to pursuing mitigation and adaptation work simultaneously include:

• Project management cost savings (from streamlining planning processes and reducing the occurrence of contradictory or doubled-up work)
• Improved property value
• Improved occupant comfort & safety
• Improved air quality
• Green job creation
• And many more

One of the primary sources of GHG emissions in buildings is energy use, particularly for heating. Therefore, energy efficiency improvements, when undertaken strategically with climate hazards in mind, can help to increase a building’s resiliency while simultaneously reducing its GHG emissions. Some examples include improving the building envelope, upgrading HVAC filtration systems, and installing renewable energy generation or storage.

Regardless of where you are on your journey towards low carbon resilience, Prism can help. Prism’s sustainability and energy management teams can leverage their strategic planning and stakeholder engagement expertise to help you design low carbon and resilient climate action, sustainability and strategic energy management plans and policies. These plans and policies will focus on your organization’s priorities in areas such as: GHG emissions reduction, energy conservation, water conservation, waste reduction and zero-emission vehicle fleet transition.

Our electrical and mechanical teams can help you with facilities assessments, feasibility studies and building design and upgrades to assess and improve your buildings. We can help you identify a wide range of low carbon resilience opportunities in areas such as energy efficiency, renewable energy, water conservation, low carbon electrification, and fleet charging infrastructure. We can also help with disaster relief and recovery when it is called for.

By planning early and considering climate change adaptation and mitigation simultaneously you can help your organization to increase its low carbon resilience now and into the future.

Read more about our Climate Adaptation services.

Want to discuss how our services can support your organization?

There were more than 60,000 light-duty electric vehicles (EV) on BC’s roads in 2021. As one of North America’s leaders in EV adoption, the number of EV vehicles in BC are expected to surpass 200,000 by the year 2026 and 300,000 by 2028. Many businesses and residences will require upgrades to meet the new demand for EV charging as drivers will need to recharge at home, work, school, or leisure facilities.

The benefits of improved air quality, greenhouse gas and noise reduction, and sustainable economic development have already prompted many municipalities to require EV charging infrastructure in new residential and commercial developments.

How can facility managers, building owners and property managers of residences, public facilities, commercial and industrial buildings prepare?

Prism has worked with numerous organizations in the province to complete feasibility studies, evaluate the electrical infrastructure requirements and provide updated recommendations for building and municipal bylaw updates to plan for this evolution.

We asked our electrical engineers for their top tips on EV charging infrastructure. Here is what they shared:

1. Take advantage of rebates and incentives
   • CleanBC is offering rebates for EV Ready plans, EV ready infrastructure, and EV chargers. Read the guide.
   • NRCan offers a Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) Infrastructure Program for multi-unit residential buildings (MURBs).
   • CleanBC Go Electric Fleets Program offers funding to reduce barriers for the adoption of ZEVs.
2. Be mindful of challenges most MURB stratas face. This includes infrastructure cost approval, load sharing, limited space within electrical rooms and costly network fees.
3. Consider load management or load sharing for constrained electrical systems. This can be done at the circuit, panel, or system level.
4. Review and familiarize yourself with manufacture, municipal, and utility provider guidelines and requirements.

5. Plan for the long-term. You will save money if you do all your coring and trenching at the same time and use conduits large enough to be used for future expansion rather than having to do it each time a new charging station needs to be installed.
6. Don’t forget about fleet vehicles. With more medium and heavy-duty EV options becoming available, it is a good time to start evaluating ZEVs to reduce your organization’s GHG emissions.

Our Electrical team will be happy to work with you to identify your needs and provide customized recommendations.

Want to discuss how our services can support your organization?

Real Property Services (RPS), a branch of Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC), hired Prism to support their efforts to engage employees in embedding sustainability actions into operations across Canada.

A multi-year project from 2019-2021, we developed a Communication Plan and supporting employee engagement materials to help RPS employees understand what sustainability actions they need to integrate into their work. Based on our time working together, we’ve pulled together four reflections that we believe are important for any successful sustainability strategy and implementation project.

The 4 insights

1. Change is a process, not an event.

At its core, integrating sustainability commitments into organizational practice is a change management project. We know that change doesn’t happen overnight; individuals will move through change at their own pace.

For this project, RPS is asking employees across the country to make changes to current work processes that will take time, resources and require critical thinking and problem solving. We worked with RPS to develop communication materials and a plan that provide employees with the information and support they need to move from awareness to execution.

2. Customize communication to your target audience(s).

Successfully implementing a change management project depends on effective communication and engagement with the people involved in the change. In the case of RPS, we segmented the audience into three groups: senior leadership, middle management and teams.

Research and experience tell us that senior leaders provide the authority and credibility necessary for successful change. They must be active and visible sponsors. Middle management is the group most likely to resist change, but also best positioned to coach and influence their teams. Individual employees and teams are at the heart of organizational change and, ultimately, a project’s success is dependent on their ability to adopt new ways of working.

At RPS, we consulted and learned about each of these stakeholder groups to understand their motivators and barriers to support the integration of sustainability actions. Based on the results, we tailored communication and engagement initiatives to speak to the right person, with the right message, at the right time, in the right place.

3. Design with the end-user in mind.

We developed all of our communication and engagement materials for the project with the end-user in mind. Through consultation and collaboration with employee groups across the country, we asked questions to understand how departmental processes work, what challenges employees foresaw with the rollout, what support systems would be helpful, as well as perspectives and attitudes about the project and its impact. The result is a plan and suite of materials that employees already support and are practical for them to use.

4. Collaborate and iterate.

Working with RPS felt like a true team effort. Instead of delivering lengthy drafts based on assumptions about content and direction, we collaborated during weekly working meetings to iterate content and make decisions. And, as we describe throughout this article, we engaged with stakeholder groups across the country to ensure we made informed decisions that listened to our audiences’ needs. The result is a plan and suite of materials that we are proud to see implemented across the country.

Prism is here to support your organization’s success.

Our experience with this project highlights what we see time and time again: people are at the heart of change. At Prism, we’re committed to working with organizations to develop and implement sustainability strategies that engage people every step of the way.

Interested to learn more?
Connect with the SEM Team