BCSEA News & Views

BC Hydro is currently rewarding people who can save 10% of their fuel bill with $75. Sign-up to be a Team PowerSmart Member and track your energy savings on line.

Reward eligibility: Account holders must have at least 12 months history at the same address, must be a Team Power Smart member, and must sign up to Track Your Savings online. Solar hot water will definitely help you reach this goal.

"This is a great tool," says SolarBC Project Manager Liz Kelly. "I can see on line that since we installed our solar hot water system, our BC Hydro bills for April and May are already significantly less than they were during the same time last year."

Can we use the high value of personal mobility to cut our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions? According to LiveSmart BC, over 40% of average household GHG emissions in BC are from personal mobility; that is, the cars we drive. Since BC's electricity is largely from carbon free hydro, if we wish to cut our emissions by 40%, we just have to switch to electric vehicles (EV).

And why not? EVs are clean, and they produce no exhaust to form smog or trigger asthma. They run silently, making our cities quieter. They are simple machines with hundreds of fewer moving parts, which cuts maintenance costs and increases durability. Their current range of 150 km is plenty for most families, most of the time. Slow charging at home means you can always leave with a full battery. And the fact that our current autos last an average of 13 years means that huge emission reductions could happen relatively fast as they are replaced.

Starting this month, the BCSEA’s Okanagan Chapter is hosting Sustainable Energy EDucation Series (SEEDS) workshops in Kelowna. The objective of this series is to raise public awareness of clean energy and environmentally sustainable technologies.

The workshops are designed to be hands-on and interactive as much as possible. They will also provide participants with an opportunity to meet others, ask questions and get involved with the BCSEA. Each workshop will be lead by a member of the local chapter with specific knowledge and experience in the topic being covered.

Notes from the Okanagan Chapter's July Meeting:

This meeting continued planning the upcoming green energy workshops, SEEDS. (Sustainable Energy EDucation Series).

What can a talking sheep, a board game, and a giant thermometer teach kids about climate change and energy use? When they’re a part of BCSEA’s Climate Change Showdown, the answer is quite a bit.

The Showdown is an in-class workshop designed for elementary schools, which challenges children to participate in a take-home contest to reduce their family’s energy use. Since 2005, the program has reached 40,000 BC students, and participation in this year’s take home contest was phenomenal.

The little room at the Roundhouse in Yaletown was packed thanks to our regular members as well as a lot of new people that heard about the meeting from EPIC.

Greetings from the Darfield Earthship in the North Thompson Valley of British Columbia, Canada! July 1, 2010 marks Canada Day and the official start of Year two building our Earthship. As of today (July 1) we’ve decked a portion of the roof and have been roughing in electrical. The front wall is framed and it is starting to look more and more like a house!

Since starting our earthship exactly one year ago, we have come to realize what an educational opportunity our home is for many, many people—ourselves included.

What has been remarkable to us, however, is the incredible teaching tool it has become for our children, Katie (12), Stephen (10) and Helen (9).

On June 19th, we presented for the second year at the British Columbia Sustainable Energy Association (Kamloops Chapter) annual Energy Fair in Kamloops, BC. The kids entered a project about the house in the kids contest and they won first prize: a day of sailing or kayaking on the Shuswap!

The Kamloops chapter of the BCSEA has raised the bar with their fourth Annual Energy Fair.

The McArthur Island Sports Centre in North Kamloops once more hosted exhibitors showcasing all the aspects of energy you can imagine. From the earthship home to the solar energy products, the fair displayed sustainable energy literally from the ground up.

With 40 booths at the well attended show, the “local energy” was amazing. Most of the folks attending this year had their sights set on specific energy saving products and projects to assist in the greening of their homes.

What’s the payback period on a typical residential solar thermal installation?  Which rebate programs apply to your planned reno?  How can you measure the energy use of your existing appliances?  No matter where you live in BC, you can find out the answers to these questions (and more!) at BCSEA’s 4th annual Kamloops Energy Fair.

“The Kamloops Energy Fair is a community event and trade show demonstrating how we can all use energy more sustainably in our homes, businesses, and transportation,” says organizer Cheryl Kabloona. “Everybody wants to help with the challenge of climate change, but it’s hard to know how to go about it," she explains. "The Energy Fair highlights big and small ideas that everyone can try -- the whole range from getting mobile on an electric bicycle to installing wind turbines.”