CANMORE – As world leaders fail to tackle the causes of climate change, closer to home Canmore’s political leaders aren’t waiting any longer.
On Tuesday night (Dec. 4), councillors unanimously approved a climate action plan that by 2050 will slash greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent below 2015 levels.
The lofty plan aligns closely with the federal government’s climate change plan and includes 60 actions the town may consider over the next three decades to achieve its greenhouse gas reduction targets.
Mayor John Borrowman acknowledged the targets are ambitious, but nonetheless threw his support behind the plan.
“We in the community have talked a lot about the urgent need to address climate change and as we’ve been noting it really comes down to political leadership, particularly at the municipal level,” said Borrowman.
Approval of the plan comes as world leaders meet in Poland this week to discuss ways to keep the global temperature rise below 2 C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 C.
To achieve the targets set out in Canmore’s climate action plan, the Town took an inventory of local greenhouse gas emissions. The inventory is based on the baseline year of 2015 and is organized around three sources of emissions including buildings, transportation and waste, and is separated into community emissions and the municipal government’s own emissions.
In 2015, the community generated nearly 275,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions. Residential, commercial and institutional buildings contributed to 54 per cent of community’s total emissions, while emissions from transportation contributed 40 per cent. Waste, including garbage and biosolids from the wastewater treatment plant, contributed the remaining six per cent.
If nothing is done to reduce or cut the amount of emissions produced by the community, the plan predicts emissions will continue to rise reaching more then 400,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emission by 2025 based on a population growth rate of 4.5 per cent.
“At this point in time there is no legal requirement for us to meet a renewable or low carbon target, so who knows what the future legislative requirements may be, but certainly any commitments we make locally we would want to move forward on,” said Lori Rissling Wynn, Canmore’s sustainability coordinator.
An inventory of corporate emissions from the municipal government indicates it produced nearly 7,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions in 2015, which is about 2.5 per cent of the community total.
The greatest contributor was the Town’s buildings, accounting for 80 per cent of its total emissions. Street and traffic lights contributed nine per cent, followed by energy required to operate the wastewater treatment plant at six per cent. The Town’s fleet of vehicles accounted for five per cent of total emissions.
To achieve its targets, the 39-page plan includes short and long-term goals to reduce emissions from buildings, transportation and waste.
“The targets that are in the plan are both grounded in provincial actions related to climate change and federal actions as well,” said Wynn. “There are big pictures emission reductions in the plan, but also some more specific targets related to priority activities.”
By 2030 the plan states the community of Canmore will reduce its green house gas emission by 30 per cent below 2015 levels. The plan proposes the Town of Canmore adopt a corporate strategy to achieve a 50 per cent reduction in its own emissions, given that is has much greater control over its own buildings and operations.
To cut community emissions by 2030, the plan proposes simple retrofits to 80 per cent of existing buildings to improve energy efficiency, such as installing weather stripping, extra insulation and high efficiency windows, appliances and lighting.
The plan also proposes that 80 per cent of new homes are built to a near net zero standard of energy consumption, meaning the total amount of energy used by a building on an annual basis is roughly equal to the amount of renewable energy created on site.
The plan also envisions 30 per cent of energy used in buildings in Canmore will come for renewable sources.
To cut transportation emissions, the climate action plan aims to reduce the number of kilometres residents travel in a vehicle by 30 per cent. It also envisions 40 per cent of trips within the community will use sustainable modes of transportation such as transit, biking or walking, and 20 per cent of vehicles will be electric. To cut the community’s waste, the plan proposes diverting 60 per cent of all organic waste from the landfill, a 40 per cent reduction in amount of solid waste each resident produces, a 50 per cent decrease in construction waste and 30 per cent reduction in commercial and institutional waste.
On the corporate side, the Town wants to cut 50 per cent of its emissions by 2030 by cutting energy use in its buildings by 50 per cent, switching a significant number of its vehicles to electric or hybrid and cutting its solid waste by 80 per cent.
While the plan includes 60 actions that can be taken, it acknowledges that not all of them have to be implemented immediately, however without implementing many of them it is unlikely the Town will see significant progress towards its targets.
“In the implementation piece I think it will be important for us to prioritize what are, to use a bit of jargon, the low-hanging fruit and the things that we can do potentially over the next year that don’t even necessarily have a budget allocated to it at this point in time,” said Wynn.
“It is going to be important for us to take that list of 60 and identify which of the ones we want to tackle first and then continue to chip away at it.”
Borrowman noted some of the short-term goals proposed in the plan by 2025 were aggressive, such as retrofitting 300 homes with solar power. Other short-term goals over the next seven years include installing four electric vehicle charging stations in town and implementing an organic waste collection program for residential neighbourhoods.
“I don’t recall anything in the budget that might bring that to pass,” said Borrowman.
Wynn acknowledged that some goals may need to be amended and any actions that would require financial resources would be brought back to council during the budget process.
