Vancouver’s False Creek Neighbourhood Energy Utility (NEU) was the first district energy project in North America to recover waste heat from raw sewage, one of only three other such systems in the world at the time it was developed.
The concept for the False Creek NEU was approved by the City of Vancouver in 2006 and began operation during the 2010 Winter Olympics. The initial service area was the neighbourhood known as Southeast False Creek, a former industrial area on Vancouver’s waterfront and the site of Vancouver’s Olympic Village. This neighbourhood was expected to undergo rapid revitalization and development following the 2010 Winter Olympics.
The NEU is currently owned and operated by the City of Vancouver. Since 2010, City Council has expanded the service area multiple times. It now includes the False Creek Flats, Northeast False Creek, and parts of Mount Pleasant. As of 2026, the NEU supplied space heating and domestic hot water to over 7.1 million square feet of residential, commercial, and institutional space, including Science World and Emily Carr University. About 25 million square feet is anticipated to be connected by full build out of the current service area.
The NEU captures waste heat in raw sewage to produce space heating and hot water via a large industrial heat pump. The heat is distributed to individual buildings through a modern low-temperature hot water network. The Energy Centre, which has received architectural accolades, currently contains 3.2 MW of sewage heat recovery capacity. However, an additional 6.6 MW of sewage heat recovery capacity was added 2023 to meet demand growth. Because of technological improvements, Vancouver is able to fit twice the capacity in the same footprint as the first heat pump installation.
The NEU has won multiple awards, including the International District Energy Association’s Champion City UN Environment District Energy in Cities Initiative Public Sector Leadership Award in 2018.
Reshape has been involved in this project in a variety of roles. In 2023, the City engaged Reshape to develop a “Decarbonization Roadmap” for the NEU to identify a preferred pathway to fully decarbonize the NEU’s heat supply in 2030 and maintain a 100% renewable energy supply as the system continues to grow.
Reshape developed and screened a long list of energy supply options and shortlisted a selection energy supply concepts for further quantitative evaluation. Reshape evaluated 11 different decarbonization pathways that the NEU could take to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030. These pathways were evaluated on the basis of lifecycle cost (NPV) and levelized cost of energy ($/MWh), emission factor (kg/MWh), and a range of qualitative factors. Based on the outcomes of the evaluation, Reshape developed a Decarbonization Roadmap for the False Creek NEU.
In 2025 Reshape supported the development of a “Green Heat” service offering for the NEU, to enable new buildings in the NEU service area to satisfy the Vancouver Building Bylaw (VBBL) greenhouse gas intensity requirements by connecting to the NEU. Following on our team’s work, the NEU received approval from Vancouver City Council to offer customers two lower-GHG emission products (roughly equivalent to 88% and 100% renewable energy), in addition to the NEU’s standard 70% renewable thermal energy offering. These new Green Heat rates allow NEU customers to comply with the increasingly stringent greenhouse gas emissions limits in the Vancouver Building Bylaw.
As of early 2026, Reshape is continuing to support the NEU on matters related to tracking the utility’s financial performance and rates.
