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Heritage BC
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  • About

    About

    • What We Do
    • Advocacy
    • Heritage Update
    • Plans and Reports
    • Membership
    • Donate
    • Sponsors
    • Board of Directors
    • Staff
  • Events & Activities

    Events & Activities

    • 2022 Conference
    • BC Heritage Awards
    • Heritage Week
    • Dates to Know
  • Learning Centre

    Learning Centre

    • ICH: Creating a Community-Based Inventory
    • Intangible Cultural Heritage
    • Climate Adaptation: Making a Case
    • Climate Adaptation: Framework and Implementation
    • Setting the Bar: A Reconciliation Guide for Heritage
    • A Guide to Making a Case for Heritage
    • Heritage Conservation Tools: Resource Guides
    • Webinars On-Demand
    • Heritage Workshops
    • Other Heritage Education Programs
  • Cultural Maps

    Cultural Maps

    • Submerged Heritage Resources
    • Columbia Basin Region Heritage Places
    • Francophone Historic Places Map
    • Chinese Canadian Historic Places Map
    • Japanese Canadian Historic Places
    • South Asian Canadian Map
    • War Monuments and Memorials Map
    • Mapping Heritage
  • Resources

    Resources

    • Accessibility for Historic Places
    • Conservation in BC Reports
    • Definitions and Heritage FAQs
    • Funding Opportunities
    • Heritage Real Estate
    • State of Heritage: Provincial Roundtables
    • Indigenous Cultural Heritage
    • Local Government: Library of Source Documents
    • Racism: Do Not Let the Forgetting Prevail
    • Heritage Quick Studies
    • Other Tools, Publications, Guides
  • Heritage Legacy Fund

    Heritage Legacy Fund

    • Heritage Legacy Fund Review
    • Who Benefits?
    • Past Grant Recipients
    • Climate Disaster Response Fund
  • Job Board

    Job Board

    • Job Hunting Resources
    • Job Postings
    • Submit a Job
  • Contact
  • ICH: Creating a Community-Based Inventory
  • Intangible Cultural Heritage
  • Climate Adaptation: Making a Case
  • Climate Adaptation: Framework and Implementation
  • Setting the Bar: A Reconciliation Guide for Heritage
    • 1. Setting the Bar: Heritage and Reconciliation Pledge
    • 2. Setting the Bar: Acknowledging Land and People
    • 3. Setting the Bar: Celebrating Days of Recognition and Commemoration
    • 4. Setting the Bar: With a Commitment to Learn
    • 5. Setting the Bar: Committing to Strategic Organizational Diversity
    • 6. Setting the Bar: Mission-Making Room for Reconciliation
    • 7. Setting the Bar: Possession, Interpretation, Repatriation and Cultural Care
    • 8. Setting the Bar: Shared Decision Making
    • 9. Setting the Bar: Statements of Significance and other heritage planning documents
    • 10. Setting the Bar: Heritage Conservation Tools, Local Government Act
  • A Guide to Making a Case for Heritage
  • Heritage Conservation Tools: Resource Guides
  • Webinars On-Demand
    • Upcoming Webinars
  • Heritage Workshops
  • Other Heritage Education Programs
  • Learning Centre
  • Climate Adaptation: Making a Case

Building Reuse is Climate Action: Summaries and Resources

 

Summary List of Benefits of Focusing on Existing & Historic Buildings:

  • Increase overall sustainability and resilience;
  • Improve community place-making and continuity;
  • Increase achievement of social and cultural objectives such as inclusivity and commemoration;
  • Reduce urban intensification impacts and costs;
  • Heritage generates jobs and income and avoids waste from demolition;
  • Retrofitting existing buildings offers the most substantial emissions reductions over time.

Summary List of Recommendations:

  • Dramatic acceleration of context-sensitive rehabilitation of the massive stock of existing, abandoned and heritage properties;
  • Bring forward policies and programs to further enhance the feasibility and attractiveness of deep green rehabilitation to existing and historic buildings;
  • Energy Code for Existing Buildings to be adopted into the BC Building code: launch before 2024 if possible;
  • Policy tools that help remove obstacles for building reuse and remove barriers to retrofit and retrofit policies;
  • Consider a range of tax benefits for existing and historic building renewal that decreases carbon emissions;
  • Policy levers that enhance sustainable finance for decarbonizing rehab/retrofit for existing & historic buildings;
  • Engage conservation professionals with experience in new interventions into existing buildings to assist with policy and program development;
  • Collaborate with Heritage BC to review policy and program proposals, to ensure conservation community input is considered and existing & historic buildings are optimally decarbonized while protecting and leveraging their values.

Other resources and authors

  • Architects Climate Action Network. The Carbon Footprint of Construction: a case for regulating embodied carbon in construction to significantly address the impact of the industry on the climate. 2021
  • Hallé, Renée. Renewing UBC’S Campus. Carleton University, November 14, 2019. PowerPoint Presentation.
  • Heritage BC. “Making a Case for Building Conservation.” Heritage BC Learning Centre. Making a Case for Heritage: Building Conservation – Heritage BC
  • London Energy Transformation Initiative. LETI Embodied Carbon Primer: Supplementary Guidance to the Climate Emergency Design Guide. World Green Building Council, 2020.
  • Sanders, Helen. “Carbon Counting: Why ‘Embodied’ Carbon Matters.” US Glass Mag, August 2, 2019. https://www.usglassmag.com/insights/2019/08/carbon-counting-why-embodied-carbon-matters-part-1/
  • Thompson Brandt, Mark, and Cory Rouillard. “Climate Chaos and Heritage- Conservation Values: The Urgency for Action.” Traditional Building, October 2020. https://lsc-pagepro.mydigitalpublication.com/article/Climate+Chaos+and+Heritage-+Conservation+Values%3A+The+Urgency+for+Action/3762040/673255/article.html
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As an organization of provincial scope, Heritage BC recognizes that its members, and the local history and heritage they seek to preserve, occupy the lands and territories of B.C.’s Indigenous peoples. Heritage BC asks its members and everyone working in the heritage sector to reflect on the places where they reside and work, and to respect the diversity of cultures and experiences that form the richness of our provincial heritage.