Edmonton is a city of climate champions, and it’s time for the world to know | COP-27 series Part 1
I’m going to COP-27 to learn from other cities and share Edmonton’s climate actions on a global stage.
This week, I’ll be traveling to Sharm-el Sheikh in Egypt as part of the Edmonton Metropolitan Region and the larger Team Alberta at COP-27, the United Nations international summit on climate change.
I will be participating in the Sustainable Cities Forum, the Municipal Leadership in Achieving Net Zero Emissions Forum, and the Hydrogen Transition Summit to share the integral role that cities play in ensuring a greener future for all of us.
The Role of Cities in Addressing Climate Change:
Cities are at the forefront of climate change. City governments work closely with communities, and understand their local context, giving them many levers to advance energy transition.
As a city, Edmonton can do this effectively through land use planning and zoning to ensure we increase development density as well as investing in green infrastructure including in active transport lanes, low-carbon transit, the LRT network and by choosing electric buses.
Edmontonians are moving on climate action:
Edmonton is not new to bold climate action. In 2019 Edmonton’s City Council declared a climate emergency. Since then the City has increased its efforts to reduce the impact of climate change and has set bolder and more ambitious climate targets by introducing programs that will help Edmontonians decrease their carbon footprint.
Edmonton currently has more than 1100 kilometers of shared pathways, and over 20 kilometers of protected bike lanes which has doubled our city’s daily bike usage in the last 10 years. As we implement The Bike Plan to bring safe, green transportation options to people across the city, we will continue to see a shift toward low-carbon modes of transportation.
Why is tackling climate change a priority for Edmonton?
All of this work is incredibly important as we know that climate change is dramatically impacting our weather patterns in Alberta.
Don Forgeron, the President of the Insurance Bureau of Canada has said “Alberta has become the place where bad weather pays a visit more often.”
The Prairies region is warming at the fastest rate in Canada outside of the Arctic region. This brings a higher risk of flooding, a higher risk of drought, higher frequency of extreme heat events.
Over the last 20 years, insured costs of climate hazards in Alberta have been increasing. Since the 1990’s, Alberta has experienced six out of the ten biggest climate hazard insured losses in Canada.
Climate change will negatively impact our GDP by billions of dollars a year due to the damages to infrastructure and property, service or production losses, health costs, environmental costs and financial losses.
The City of Edmonton is focused on empowering homeowners and businesses to lower their energy needs and build a climate-resilient city.
For Homeowners
We introduced the Clean Energy Improvement Program which helps residents to upgrade their homes by providing access to new windows and insulation to be more energy efficient and the cost can be slowly paid back over a number of years through their property taxes.
This program was fully subscribed to within a few days of launching, indicating an appetite for this type of program amongst Edmontonians.
We also introduced a Home Energy Retrofit Accelerator — which is a rebate program designed to help homeowners understand their home’s energy use and it provides financial incentives to encourage deep energy retrofits.
We also implemented the SOLAR Rebate — which is a highly successful program to promote solar energy adoption. Since 2019, the City’s Residential Solar Rebate program has funded more than 800 new solar installations, equal to 5.6 MW of capacity.
For Businesses
We introduced the Building Energy Benchmarking Program which assists commercial and multifamily building owners in measuring the energy performance of their buildings so that they can take steps to improve their energy efficiency.
This program is now in its 5th year, with 704 individual buildings. The top 90 participants have been able to reduce their energy use by 10%.
We also implemented the Building Energy Retrofit Accelerator (BERA) which is a rebate program that aims to address the emissions resulting from the operations of commercial and institutional buildings by reducing building energy intensity.
The City of Edmonton’s Corporate Goals:
As much as we are helping Edmontonians reduce their carbon footprint, the City as a corporation has also set a goal of reaching net zero by 2040.
Green Energy Contracts will supply City Operations with 100% renewable electricity by 2024. The power generated by these contracts will prevent over 95,000 tonnes of carbon per year from entering the atmosphere. That’s the same result as taking 20,470 cars off the road.
We’re also well underway in building Blatchford, a City of Edmonton led neighbourhood that will be home to nearly 30,000 Edmontonians living, working and learning in a sustainable community that uses 100% renewable energy, is carbon neutral, significantly reduces its ecological footprint, and empowers residents to pursue a range of sustainable lifestyle choices.
And while the City of Edmonton is doing a lot of good work in our effort to combat climate change, at COP-27 –I’ll be looking for new ways that we can further reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to ensure we’re improving our world for current and future generations to come.
Learn more about what the City of Edmonton is doing for climate at changeforclimate.ca
