City hears its targets unlikely to be met

The City of Saskatoon should either revise its greenhouse gas targets or ramp up its reduction efforts, an audit of the city’s plan says.

City council’s finance committee considered the results of the audit by Pricewaterhousecoopers at its meeting Tuesday afternoon.

The city has adopted a reduction target to reduce city hall’s corporate greenhouse gas emissions by 40 per cent below 2014 levels by 2023 and by 80 per cent by 2050.

The city’s targets for community-wide reduction include a drop of 15 per cent below 2014 levels by 2023 and a decrease of 80 per cent by2050.

“You should probably take a step back and decide if those targets are realistic for you,” Pricewaterhousecoopers technical consultant Christine Schuh told the committee.

The audit tabled on Tuesday says it’s “doubtful” Saskatoon will be able to achieve the targets adopted by city council in June 2017.

“We suggest either changing the targets and/or increasing the emphasis on (greenhouse gas) mitigation measures,” the audit says.

Schuh said it’s “not an unusual situation” for a city to have set unreachable emission reduction targets, but she added Saskatoon is farther behind than most comparable cities.

Other cities have advanced their plans to reduce emissions to a greater extent than Saskatoon has, she said.

The audit compared Saskatoon’s emission reduction targets and efforts to achieve them to three other Canadian cities: Calgary, Edmonton and London, Ont.

The audit report recommends the city increase its annual budget to combat emissions by $1 million and hire an additional 9.5 full-time employees. The current budget for the plan to reduce emissions is $150,000, covering one and a half full-time employees.

Brenda Wallace, the city ’s director of environmental and corporate initiatives, told the committee a report is coming in October detailing a strategy to achieve the emission reduction targets. That report and the financial resources needed to implement it will be forwarded for consideration during deliberations on the 2019 budget, the committee heard.

Mayor Charlie Clark said the audit report will help council move forward on the issue.

“I think it gives us a chance to strategize here on how we’re going to bite these pieces off,” Clark told the committee.

The audit, which was completed in June, also includes information on how the city will be affected by the federal government’s carbon pricing plan.

If the community fails to reduce its carbon emissions, under the carbon pricing plan and accounting for population growth and inflation, the cost of carbon taxes between now and 2022 is calculated at $5.74 million.

If the city hits its reduction target of 15 per cent by 2022, carbon taxes will still total $5.25 million over the same time period, the audit report says.

I think it gives us a chance to strategize here on how we’re going to bite these pieces off.