Sustainability Scholars Program

This project explores policy options on how Metro Vancouver and member municipalities can lead the implementation of building energy benchmarking, an ongoing measurement of a building's energy performance. The research report includes lessons learned from leading jurisdictions, an overview of existing benchmarking requirements in the region and findings from stakeholder interviews, and presents four policy alternatives for consideration by Metro Vancouver and member jurisdictions. 

Partner: UBC Campus & Community Planning
Keywords: green buildings, building energy benchmarking, policy solutions for existing buildings

This project was conducted for TransLink on how remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS), or drones, could be a future option for freight and passenger transportation. Includes an overview of RPAS technology, Canadian and American regulation frameworks and the challenges facing the RPAS industry. Includes policy and technological considerations for TransLink to consider once RPAS passenger and freight travel has been approved by Transport Canada. 

Partner: TransLink
Keywords: transportation, drones, RPAS

Interest in transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources has encouraged the development and refinement of new technologies. This report researches the alternative technologies available for off-grid microgeneration applications for Metro Vancouver sites. A high-level feasibility study was conducted to determine which technologies might replace current solar, thermoelectric, and battery energy-based systems, and to recommend next steps for exploring promising technologies.

Partner: Metro Vancouver
Keywords: sustainable development, green economy, water infrastructure

This project looks at the costs and benefits of transitioning full-service restaurant kitchens from gas-powered ranges and griddles to induction ranges and griddles in order to reduce the carbon footprint of Vancouver’s restaurant industry. The research draws on low carbon best practices examples found in California and Ecuador to make recommendations on policies and strategies that the City of Vancouver can employ.

Partner: City of Vancouver
Keywords: climate and renewables, green buildings, green economy

Considering the alarming health and economic burden caused by sugar sweetened beverage consumption, one of the goals of UBC Wellbeing is to increase tap water consumption and decrease sugary beverage consumption among UBC Community members. The objective of this project was to engage the UBC community of staff, students and faculty in developing an evidence-informed strategy to promote water consumption and reduce consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages on campus to be rolled out in the summer of 2018. Feedback from the UBC community was obtained through an online survey and a series of engagement meetings.

Partner: UBC Wellbeing
Keywords: social sustainability, food systems

This document details contributions to the LiteFarm application project. LiteFarm is a multifunctional web app that aims to help farmers make day-to-day decisions, and encourage them to farm more sustainably. The feature set in LiteFarm was created based on a farmer participatory design process, including iterative user experience and user interface testing. 

Update May, 2020
Craig's foundational work in 2018 helped the UBC Farm build and refine the LiteFarm application. LiteFarm is now the world’s first community-led, not-for-profit, digital platform joining farmers and scientists together for participatory assessment of social, environmental and economic outputs of farming systems. 

You can see the tool at www.litefarm.org and read updated documentation on Github.

Partner: UBC Farm
Keywords: ecological systems, food systems, sustainable development & green economy

This report summarizes the activities undertaken by the International Sustainable Campus Network (ISCN) Charter working group in the development of the ISCN Sustainable Campus Charter. It is designed to serve as a knowledge translation tool; the purpose is to create a document that will prove useful for other organizations who endeavour to lead a charter development process.

Partner: USI
Keywords: leadership & behaviour change, social sustainability, sustainability in education

Since 2011, the City of North Vancouver has had energy targets and guidelines in place to ensure that all new developments in the city meet progressive energy targets. This Sustainability Scholars project sought to analyse the trove of data created through the Energy Efficient Buildings Initiative to identify the tradeoffs being identified by builders in the area who are looking to meet and exceed the energy targets. The analysis of the building data will provide an opportunity for local builders to meet and exceed the future energy standards that are required through the BC Step Code.

Partner: City of North Vancouver
Keywords: green buildings, leadership & behaviour change

Currently, there are more than 500 public electric vehicle (EV) charging stations located throughout MEtro Vancouver. The use of these charging stations is increasing, but it is not yet clear the degree to which they are relied upon compared to residential charging. This project was developed to better understand the impact that public charging infrastructure has on EV adoption, trip behaviour and lifestyles in Metro Vancouver.

Partner: Fraser Basin Council
Keywords: transportation