Community Benefits
The Solar Colwood program will benefit the City of Colwood, its residents and the Capital region in many ways:
- Homeowners and businesses will benefit from reduced energy costs, especially as prices rise into the future. They will also benefit from energy security, having their own source of power rather than relying on external providers, and having better control of their “own castle”. This will be especially useful in this earthquake-prone region.
- This program will foster and support skill development and job creation in Colwood and local First Nations, and stimulate the local ‘green’ economy. The total project value is in excess of $12 million, and will generate significant economic benefits to the City and the region.
- The community of Colwood will reduce its energy and emissions footprint through the use of energy conservation and clean, renewable energy sources. This will benefit the global climate, and help the City to reach its carbon neutral goal, also reducing future carbon offsets that the City will be required to pay.
- It demonstrates Colwood’s vision as a green learning university city, willing to learn about and try new approaches, work closely with standards-making processes and encourage ‘technology tourism’ – visitation by others wishing to learn from this approach.
- It provides a ‘living laboratory’ to study the best approaches to mass adoption of solar, geoexchange and other clean energy technologies, including the best approaches to social diffusion and to getting these ideas to ‘go viral’.
- It raises awareness in the broader community of the benefits of energy conservation and use of clean energy sources.
- It provides sound research to demonstrate the business case for making clean energy decisions.
- It demonstrates how a utility model for financing renewable zero emissions energy technology in new and existing homes can function; creating and proving a business model that can be adopted by other utility companies and local governments to ensure the rapid spread of these beneficial technologies in a way that will not happen under current financing models.
