City far from reaching goals to cut emissions

Transition panel to provide new plan, targets, action and financial details

Edmonton is not close to reaching its greenhouse emission-reduction targets, city council’s executive committee heard Thursday.

To achieve the goals within the next four years, officials will have to consider different methods, including major retrofits to buildings and even demolitions, councillors were told. The energy transition committee is expected to report in May a recalibrated greenhouse gas management plan and new targets, action and the related financial details.

Jason Meliefste, city branch manager for infrastructure planning and design, told the committee what “caught us off guard” was that in the last four years the city ’s overall building stock in terms of square footage increased by 50 per cent.

David Dodge, co-chairman of the energy transition advisory committee, said the city shouldn’t rush into anything.

LONGER-TERM IMPACT

“Do the analysis,” he said. “Somebody might come to you and say, ‘We can put a new boiler in that building and we can make it 20 per cent more energy efficient.’ Well, don’t just make that decision. Do the assessment. So if you decide this building isn’t worth even that small amount of money on a small retrofit, and you know you’re going to demolish it six years from now in the next budget cycle, don’t invest anything in it. Invest in something that is going to have a longer term impact.”

Meliefste pointed out that buildings are only a small part of the strategy.

The best way to lower emissions, by at least two-thirds, is to get off fossil fuels and move to renewables, he said.

One of the areas of focus for the energy transition strategy is to switch to solar power.

The city expects an uptake in solar power with the launch of a new solar map showing the energy potential of roofs.

But while these are ambitious projects, they require money.

Dodge said investments in renewables makes sense over a longer period of time.

“If there’s a kind of financing that’s slow and patient, we would just do those things,” he said.

“We wouldn’t even have to wait for budget cycles because they already make sense. We know that and we can prove it.”

Mayor Don Iveson said that there are a number of provincial and federal incentives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“We’ve had lots of conversations about how the infrastructure bank could potentially be a financing mechanism for some of these energy-efficiency programs or emission-reduction programs that have an economic payback,” he said.

“That’s not a one- or two-year payback, but maybe a five- or 10or 15-year payback. If you bundle enough of it together, it might be attractive to an institutional investor and when you add all of the other incentives into it, it becomes an attractive proposition.”