Edmonton misses targets on CO2, crime
Edmonton is falling well short of its targets on greenhouse gas emissions, infill and serious crime, council heard Tuesday in an annual performance update.
Back in 2008, council aimed to cut the city’s emissions in half by 2020. Instead, they’re still growing.
Emissions of carbon dioxide reached a new five-year high of 353,870 tonnes in 2015, and the only chance of even reaching parity with 2008 levels will involve buying green credits from companies reducing emissions elsewhere.
“Originally our target was very aggressive,” said Jim Andrais, program manager with the energy transition strategy. Council thought it could invest quickly to reduce energy use from city-owned buildings, retrofit the street lights and upgrade the municipal fleet. “But you can’t retrofit overnight,” he said. Each of those decisions took time and more money than council chose to allocate.
Council will take a second look at the issue in August. They’ll debate a new policy to require all city buildings to exceed energy efficiency standards by 15 per cent and generate at least five per cent of its energy needs through renewable energy on site.
Administration will also report back on how to boost Edmonton’s infill numbers. It’s target is to have 25 per cent of new homes be built in mature neighbourhoods by 2018. But it only hit 13 per cent last year.
On crime, Edmonton saw a spike in severity last year, which police attribute to the downturn in the economy and a relatively warm winter.
But 68 per cent of Edmonton residents still reported feeling that Edmonton was a safe city. That’s down slightly from 2014, but still up substantially from the 51 per cent who felt that way in 2010.
Data relating to how Edmonton residents feel is from a Leger survey of 400 residents contacted by telephone in November and December last year. The margin of error is 4.9 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.