Price tag to cut city's greenhouse gases tops $50 billion

It will take more than $50 billion for Ottawa's municipal government to cut out all greenhouse gas emissions over 30 years and achieve the council-endorsed targets to help reduce the impact of climate change, the city revealed Friday.

Council, after declaring a climate change emergency in 2019, has approved targets of eliminating all greenhouse gas emissions produced by the municipal government by 2040.

There's also a citywide target to eliminate all emissions by 2050.

The city is using 2012 as the baseline year for assessing the reduction in emissions.

With those targets in place, staff have done the research to determine what needs to be done to wipe out emissions over the next 30 years, culminating in the “energy evolution” strategy summarized during a city briefing on Friday.

Major reductions in emissions are anticipated in the transportation sector, with hopes that the electrification of public transit, personal vehicles and commercial fleet will make a huge impact.

Retrofits of existing buildings are also projected to clean the air. Those two areas alone are expected to make up about 75 per cent of the reductions.

Another priority includes diverting organic waste from the dumps and creating renewable natural gas. The city's green bin program, and getting more people to use the containers, will drive changes in that area.

There are emission-reduction targets for years between 2020 and 2050. The short-term target for 2025 is a reduction in emissions of 30 per cent by the municipal government and 43 per cent citywide.

The city will get a bit of help from the annual dividend paid by Hydro Ottawa to pay for programs under energy evolution.

The $2.6 million in surplus dividend from 2019 — that is, the extra money the city wasn't expecting from the dividend payment — will go toward 13 projects. They include energy conservation in municipal buildings, projects at the waste water treatment plant and staff support for new electric vehicle charging infrastructure.

All capital investments required for the energy evolution strategy amount to $57.4 billion, but the city believes the program would start seeing net savings in 2032, thanks to reduced costs for energy, operations, maintenance and carbon prices, combined with revenue from local energy-generating projects.

It's a big cost and the city can't do it alone.

Coun. Scott Moffatt, the environment chair on city council whose job will be to champion the energy evolution strategy, said municipalities are in the best position to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and he wants the other levels of government to help, even if those governments want to hog the credit.

“Come on in,” Moffatt said. “Join our team and let's get some things done.”

Council's standing committee on environmental protection, water and waste management is scheduled to consider the report on Oct 20.