Surrey First Sustainability Platform Creates Jobs while Protecting Environment

SURREY, BC : After showing proven leadership when it come to protecting the environment, Surrey First will continue to find ways to keep our city growing in a sustainable manner, and will work to create an environmental research and industry hub aimed at generating local jobs in the field.

Surrey First has announced it will launch a new Cleantech Centre for Excellence as part of an expansion of the successful Innovation Boulevard initiative, which to date has centred mainly on the health care field.

“The Cleantech Centre would be established in partnership with the Surrey City Development Corporation in order to create space for the facility space, with Simon Fraser University and local cleantech businesses to aid in the commercialization of research for our cleantech cluster,” said Bruce Hayne, chair of the city’s Environmental Sustainability Advisory Committee,  “This builds on our recently announced industry research chair which is a partnership between the city, SFU and Power Tech Labs. It demonstrates the kind of out-of-box thinking needed to utilize the tremendous resources we have here in Surrey, in order to keep the city growing sustainably, and a great place to both live and work.”

“No one in the Lower Mainland has preserved more greenspace than us, and under the Biodiversity Conservation Strategy we established, we’ll protect 10,000 acres of natural space,” said mayoral candidate Linda Hepner. “Establishing a cleantech centre not only serves to develop ways to preserve the environment, but also works to concentrate business and academic expertise in the field here in Surrey, where there’s an abundance of natural areas to work on. The result will be a new local industry that will attract investment, expertise, and new residents to the city.”

Other commitments in the Surrey First sustainability platform include strengthening tree-protection bylaws, completion by 2017 of a biofuel facility that processes organic waste into alternative fuel for use in city vehicles, and planning additional district energy hubs that will redistribute heated or cooled water through city buildings through a network of pipes, thus reducing energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.

(Please see a list of Surrey First sustainability achievements to date, and platform details here