Blatchford Carbon Neutral Community – Part 1
By David Dodge, GreenEnergyFutures.ca
Blatchford is the largest planned carbon-neutral community in North America. This visionary project in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, may have been ahead of its time when it started, but now it’s taking off and leading the way.
“It was wildly ambitious; the idea of a carbon-neutral community was very far out there,” says Anne Stevenson, Edmonton City Councillor for Ward O-day’min. Stevenson, a planner by profession, admits she was skeptical at first.
But today that’s all changed. There’s “greater and greater recognition that this is how we need to be building communities. We’ve got a great head start in Blatchford,” says Stevenson, standing on Yorke Mews, a pedestrian-only street in Blatchford.
The National Model Building code targets a net-zero-ready standard as early as 2030. Blatchford is just the place for experienced builders to showcase their energy-efficient homes and for other builders to learn how to build the homes we need.
Justin Wheler and his partner Heather MacKenzie were two of the early homeowners in this new neighbourhood, and Justin says it started slow, but is now taking off.
They remember watching families slowly begin to buy homes in Blatchford, but now Wheler says growth is exponential. There are now multiple projects underway, including a 90-home project, he says.
What is Blatchford Carbon Neutral Community?
“The vision is 30,000 Edmontonians living a sustainable lifestyle, carbon neutral, using renewable energy,” says Tom Lumsden, who heads up the City of Edmonton development project.
The City chose to act as the developer because it was the only way they could set high standards for sustainability in the neighbourhood.
“We have a district energy system that’s using renewable energy to heat the homes,” says Lumsden. Geothermal or as it is more properly called Geoexchange heating (see Geothermal 101) isn’t new in Canada, but district geoexchange energy systems are still rare here. This allows homes to use very energy-efficient heat pumps to heat and cool the homes.
As the developer, the City set the standards for this sustainable neighbourhood.
“We have a green building code,” says Lumsden. It’s about 70% above what the standard building code is. So, houses are being built very efficiently.
“The homes are incredibly energy efficient, near net zero,” says Stevenson. “What I hear most often from residents is that they love their air conditioning in the summer.”
The heat pumps in these homes are up to 700% efficient at cooling, something many residents were pleasantly surprised to discover.
The code applies to all of the homes in Blatchford, but some builders such as Landmark Homes are taking it one step further, offering fully net-zero solar-powered homes. (see our previous story on Landmark affordable net-zero)
District Geoexchange Heating keeps things warm and cool!
The City’s energy utility built the District Energy Sharing system, which consists of 570 boreholes drilled beneath a drainage lake, which harvests temperatures of eight to 10 degrees Celsius from the Earth.
The loops feed into an energy center, where a giant heat pump upgrades the temperature further before circulating the heated fluids to the homes of Blatchford.
Last summer, temperatures soared to +35C in this northern city.
“The homes are incredibly energy efficient, near net zero,” says Stevenson. “What I hear most often from residents is that they love their air conditioning in the summer.”
Numerous residents told us the district heating system and heat pumps are among their favourite features of Blatchford.
“We don’t notice the hot days or the cold days other than when we go outside. Our dog sometimes gets cold in the summer, so then he asks to go outside so he can warm up in the sunbeams,” says Justin Wheler, one of the first residents of Blatchford.
The bar for Blatchford’s Green Building Code has been raised periodically since its inception, and as of 2024, it’s equivalent to the top tier of the National Building Code (Alberta Edition).
Blatchford tackles urban sprawl with a new brand of urban design
Blatchford represents a new kind of people-centred urban design, right in the heart of the city. And many amenities were built right at the outset.
“We have a playground already, they have an outdoor rink, there’s a walking path and a stormwater pond with lots of ducks and wildlife around it,” says Wheler, an early resident of Blatchford.
Due to its central location and good planning, Blatchford already has what many suburban neighbourhoods wait years, even decades, for.
“We have an LRT station that we can walk to now and lots of bike paths that are already going in as they build up the neighbourhood. You see kids learning to bike and scoot around the neighbourhood,” says Wheler.
“Yeah, we’re pretty excited about the community garden too. We have our own little apple orchard, so that’s pretty special,” says Heather MacKenzie.
Location, Location, Location
“What makes this location so special is that it’s 10 minutes from the core of the city. It’s 500 acres, 10 minutes from the center of the city,” says Lumsden.
Blatchford is indeed an amazing opportunity that flies in the face of urban sprawl.
“It’s about the size of the existing downtown,” says Lumsden. “The old adage from real estate is location, location, location. We have that bar none. The fact that we’re doing something really cool with the sustainability features is the cherry on top.”
It’s called location efficiency (see previous story), and residents here will save time and money and produce as few as half as many emissions due to shorter commute distances, which doubles down on the energy efficiency of the homes being built under the vision of carbon neutrality.
“It’s right in the heart of the city, connected to transit, with short travel distances. There’s a grocery store already, there’s an LRT stop, it’s all the things that new neighbourhoods often wait years and years for, but they’re already here in Blatchford,” says Stevenson.
Wildly ambitious
Blatchford’s growth seemed slow in the beginning as consumers began to understand the value proposition of buying a home that requires very little energy to heat in a great location in a neighbourhood that already has features people often wait decades for.
But Blatchford has also weathered a downturn in housing, the global pandemic, and supply chain issues that have plagued many industries.
Lumsden is a seasoned developer, and he says despite all that Blatchford is doing very well and compares well to any other greenfield development.
“We are actually less than seven years from an active airport to somebody living here,” says Lumsden. “I know suburban neighbourhoods that have taken the better part of a decade to go from farmer’s field to where people are living.”
And now things seem to be taking off. There is a 90-townhouse project underway, and there are four- to six-story buildings coming and another 90-unit apartment-style development about to begin construction.
In the early stages, most of the homes being built were townhouses, and some were fairly expensive, but the plan for Blatchford was always to build a diversity of home formats from townhomes to condos and apartments with mixed commercial.
Stevenson says the plan is to include 16% affordable housing to help the housing crisis and meet climate objectives, which “is truly phenomenal.”
“It’s easy to brag about Blatchford,” says Mackenzie. “There are so few places in the city where you can get a net-zero row home at a great price point.”
“I know some of the homes here are not super affordable, but when I looked at a net-zero row home, one neighbourhood over, it was $200,000 more than ours.”
These days, the bigger builders are moving into Blatchford, such as Qualico that is building the most affordable homes so far and Landmark Homes, another production builder that pioneered net-zero homes in Edmonton 16 years ago.
Thus begins the special series we’re calling Blatchford Carbon Neutral Community, the largest planned carbon-neutral community in North America.
In future stories, we’ll talk to families about why they bought in Blatchford and what it’s like living there, and we’ll profile an innovative net-zero builder and do a deep dive into “The Magic Heat Pumps.”
Watch for future episodes and be sure to subscribe on YouTube or to our CKUA.com Radio podcast.