POLICIES & PLANS
The UBC Okanagan Sustainability Office takes a whole systems approach to developing campus sustainability and climate policies and plans. These address various areas, including energy, carbon, water, rainwater, waste, landscape, ecology, biodiversity, and campus engagement. Our approach enhances the campus’s ability to plan for and respond to current and future resource and climate challenges to support the University’s core mandate.
Our campus sustainability policies and plans clearly outline our vision, goals, targets, and strategies to advance sustainability and climate initiatives on campus. They provide guidance for practices that lead to operational and resource efficiency, as well as community and ecosystem well-being and resilience.
Policy UP12 (formerly Policy 92) governs land use, permitting, and sustainability at UBC. Below are the UBC Okanagan Sustainability Plans and Guidelines established and approved under Policy UP12.
The UBC Okanagan Climate Action Plan 2030 establishes a course of action to accelerate the reduction of core operational emissions by 2030 and also identifies measures to reduce emissions from our day-to-day activities, including commuting, food, waste and business air travel.
The UBC Okanagan Design Guidelines (The Guidelines) are provided as a compulsory design reference tool for use in the design of all future facilities, spaces, exterior lighting and landscape on the UBC Okanagan campus. The Guidelines supplement, and should be read in conjunction with, The Campus Plan, as well as the Whole Systems Infrastructure Plan.
UBC has developed “Bird Friendly Design Guidelines for Buildings” to raise awareness about the dangers buildings pose to birds and inspire the incorporation of bird friendly design strategies in campus development.
The UBCO Integrated Rainwater Management Plan provides minimum rainwater retention targets— informed by stormwater modelling that incorporates predicted climate change—to achieve 100 per cent diversion of rainwater from the municipal system. The plan supports resiliency through best practices in green infrastructure and low-impact development while supporting the natural hydrological cycle and achieving important co-benefits to the campus ecology and biodiversity.
The UBCO Whole Systems Infrastructure Plan provides a foundation for campus growth and development over the next 20 years and beyond, and addresses energy, carbon, water, landscape, ecology, biodiversity and engagement to ensure that the campus is resilient to future changes in growth, utility rates and climate change.
The Wildland Fire Management Plan for the UBC Okanagan campus has been developed to comply with the City of Kelowna’s Official Community Plan (OCP) and to meet the City’s rezoning requirements. The report assesses the wildfire threat for the campus and provides recommendations and tools to reduce this threat.
The UBC Technical Guidelines serve as the code of quality and performance for the design, construction and renovation of University-owned institutional buildings. This includes housing, athletics and institutional buildings, along with landscape and infrastructure; but excludes market housing buildings, whose maintenance is managed on a separate and different system.
The following are UBC’s Green Building Guidelines and Processes applicable to the Okanagan campus.
Guide to calculating embodied carbon and other environmental impacts in buildings at UBC.
In alignment with the policy pathway, UBC’s current requirement is a 10% reduction in embodied carbon from a defined reference building baseline. The chart below shows the recommended incremental reduction targets to align with emissions reductions goals set in CAP2030 for both the Vancouver and Okanagan campus.
UBC Integrated Sustainability Process table
The UBC Integrated Sustainability Process ensures a consistent integration of sustainability measures and brings key design disciplines together to achieve a high level of performance in a streamlined manner. Integrated design is critical for the success of a whole systems approach (recommended in the UBC Okanagan Whole Systems Infrastructure Plan) for the campus and must start early in the design process to be successful.
UBC Okanagan requires that all major projects earn LEED Gold certification for new construction. In 2022, UBC completed the UBC LEED v4.1 Implementation Guide, noting that LEED v4.1 has been launched by the USGBC as a beta version, to allow the market to work with the draft rating system and provide feedback based on real-world application.