A new city hall report says the Community Energy Transition Strategy that was approved by city council in 2015 is insufficient to keep Edmonton’s greenhouse gas emissions aligned with the 2018 Edmonton Declaration.
Edmonton generates a higher-than-average amount of greenhouse gas emissions because of the city’s northern climate and because it plays a role in fossil fuel production.
Mike Mellross, the city’s supervisor of energy transition and supply, said Thursday that a scorecard put together by international experts pegs the carbon score for each Edmontonian at 20 tonnes per individual.
The goals set by the Edmonton Declaration would get that down to an 11. However, the new report says the number Edmonton really needs to aim for is a three. That means the current plan doesn’t do enough.
“More urgent action is needed from policymakers at all levels of government.”
The report that will be reviewed by city council’s executive committee on Aug. 19 proposes more aggressive greenhouse gas reduction efforts. That includes increasing population density in mature neighbourhoods, increasing energy efficiency for all new residential buildings to get them to be net zero by 2025, and having heat exchangers and geothermal heat pumps used as common practice by 2050.
Mellross said other ideas have also been identified.
“Another thing to facilitate the goal is having the necessary support structures in place for infrastructure to have electrification of personal vehicles, with an ambition of getting 100 per cent penetration rate by 2040.”
Business is buying in said David Dodge, who co-chairs the Energy Transition Advisory Committee.
“Our builders here are the very best at building super energy-efficient buildings in all of Canada, including Vancouver, and it’s partly because the challenge here is much greater than a little bit of rain and 2 C in Vancouver on a winter day, and -30 C and a blizzard in Edmonton on a winter day.”
“This is really the moonshot of our generation,” Iveson said. “Solving this challenge is even more complicated than putting a man on the moon and yet, 50 years ago, we were able to do that.
“We have to get there. It’d be irresponsible not to. If we are the generation that fails to do this, how can I look my kids in the eye?”
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