CITY OF VANCOUVER

POLICY REPORT
ENVIRONMENT

 

Date:

April 28, 2004

 

Author:

M. Holland
S. Pander

 

Phone No.

6677 & 616-2461

 

RTS No.:

03780

 

CC File No.:

3501

 

Meeting Date:

May 18, 2004

TO:

Vancouver City Council

FROM:

The Sustainability Support Group in consultation with the Cool Vancouver Task Force and Sustainability Sponsor Group

SUBJECT:

The Cool Vancouver Task Force's Draft Community Climate Change Action Plan for the City of Vancouver

RECOMMENDATION

CITY MANAGER'S COMMENTS

The City Manager recommends approval of the foregoing.

The Draft Community Climate Change Action Plan is a well thought out, comprehensive plan that contains a wide range of ideas for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in and around the City of Vancouver. However, in moving forward with this, it is important to recognise that many of these initiatives fall beyond the City's jurisdiction, or are the responsibility of one or more other agencies in addition to the City.

Since at this time there are very few funding sources in place for the initiatives recommended by the Cool Vancouver Task Force, it is important that the City be very careful through the proposed consultation process to not create a public perception that these recommendations can or will be implemented without further work. Throughout the consultation process, it should be emphasised that before the recommended initiatives can be implemented, appropriate cost-benefit analyses must be conducted, and funding sources secured, for each initiative.

COUNCIL POLICY

On October 16, 1990, Council approved in principle Clouds of Change Recommendation #1 to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 20% as part of the actions to address global climate change issues, subject to future reports on costs and trade-offs involved in achieving the objectives and targets.

In 1995, Vancouver joined the Federation of Canadian Municipalities' "20% Club", which became the Partners for Climate Protection Program in 1998.

Council has adopted the Transport 2021 Regional Transportation Plan (1993), Vancouver Transportation Plan (1997), Downtown Vancouver Transportation Plan (2002) and Vancouver Transit Strategy (2002) which generally require transit and other non-auto modes to accommodate future increases in travel demand. The City supports maintaining peak road capacity from the region at no more than the present level, with no further significant investment to expand motor vehicle capacity into Vancouver.

On April 23, 2002, Council adopted a Definition and Principles of Sustainability to guide, prioritize, and improve the sustainability of City actions and operations.

On May 2, 2002, Council unanimously carried the motion, proposed by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, to support the Canadian Government's ratification of the Kyoto Protocol.

On March 25, 2003, Council approved an emissions reduction target of 20% from 1990 levels for the corporation of the City of Vancouver, subject to evaluation of the implications of the target to ensure it is realistic. On this same date, Council created the Cool Vancouver Task Force and requested that it report back with a report on the components of a Greenhouse Gas Reduction Action Plan for both the corporation and the community.

On June 24, 2003, Council received the Cool Vancouver Task Force's Discussion Paper on Greenhouse Gas Reduction Planning and approved (in principle) a target of 6% below 1990 emissions levels for the city (community) as a whole, subject to evaluation of the implications of the target to ensure it is realistic. Council also approved a process to develop GHG Reduction Plans for both the City (Corporate) and the Community and approved $30,000 for technical support for the development of these plans.

On December 2, 2003, Council unanimously approved the Corporate Climate Change Action Plan as proposed from the Cool Vancouver Task Force, affirming the target of a 20% reduction from 1990 levels by 2010 of emissions from the City's own operations and facilities. On this same date, Council approved funding $50,000 for a consultation process for the Community Climate Change Action Plan, as well as another $30,000 for technical expertise to support the consultation process.

PURPOSE and SUMMARY

This report is submitted to Council to convey the Cool Vancouver Task Force's Draft Community Climate Change Action Plan (CCAP) for the City of Vancouver, and to request authorization to commence a consultation process to encourage feedback from the community and stakeholders on the Draft Community CCAP and assistance in developing the actions to meet the targets for the purpose of making revisions and refinements and bringing a final plan to Council by December, 2004. In addition, this report suggests early implementation of a limited group of emissions reduction-related initiatives.

The Draft Community CCAP outlines how Vancouver as a community can reduce its Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. The Plan is the product of a year of work by both the Cool Vancouver Task Force and City staff, with additional input from technical experts at The Sheltair Group.

Targets
The Plan outlines how Vancouver can achieve the following emissions reductions:

In order to quantify the total emission reductions required to meet the 6% reduction target the following emissions inventory numbers have been established:

Meeting our emission reduction target means that we must reduce our forecasted annual GHG emissions by 410,000 tonnes between now and 2012.

Initially the Task Force worked to create a plan that would achieve the 6% reduction by 2010, but ultimately it was agreed that there was insufficient time to achieve the reductions by 2010 and a 2012 deadline was seen as more reasonable yet still ambitious.

The Energy and Emissions Linkage
This Plan focuses heavily on reducing the use of "energy" because it is through using energy that most of Vancouver's emissions occur. For instance, emissions occur during the burning of fuel for transportation and space or water heating, as well as through the burning of natural gas and coal to create electrical energy. In the past, BC has supplied most of its electricity through hydropower, however, BC Hydro is now meeting new demand for electricity largely through natural gas or coal powered generators, thus increasing emissions associated with electricity use. While BC Hydro is also using "renewable sources" to meet some of its energy requirements, this percentage is relatively small compared to fossil fuel supplied sources. The only primary source of emissions not associated with the "use" of energy, is the "methane" that escapes from the city's landfill, which the City is now capturing for re-use.

Personal and Institutional Behaviour
Changes are required in many areas to meet the proposed emissions reductions target, including:

This Plan addresses both of the above areas, and while it proposes a list of things we each can do in our daily lives to reduce emissions, it primarily focuses on changes to policy and programs in key agencies. The reason for this focus is that to achieve significant emissions reductions over the long term, we need to make these "foundational" changes in how we deal with energy and emissions with respect to our buildings, transportation systems and others.

High-Priority Action Areas
Several areas of action have been identified as priorities for change in policy and programs to reduce GHG emissions in Vancouver, including:

The Draft Community CCAP offers recommendations in each of these areas for the Vancouver community to undertake to meet the proposed target of Vancouver's share of Canada's 6% reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions below 1990 levels by 2012.

Everyone is Involved
The City of Vancouver does not have jurisdiction over many areas where action needs to be taken. This plan therefore outlines a comprehensive path to meet the City's reduction targets, including actions that many stakeholders need to pursue, from the federal government to the individual. The Task Force suggests that the City do everything it can within its jurisdiction to reduce emissions and that it encourage others to do the same to meet this collective goal.

Costs are Unknown
The real financial implications to the City and Vancouverites associated with implementing this plan are largely unknown at this point. The primary reasons for this are:

BACKGROUND

The Science
Scientists throughout the world are in widespread agreement that the earth's climate is warming and that one the primary causes of that warming is human activity, particularly that which increases the concentrations of six gases that are known as "Greenhouse Gases" (GHG) in the atmosphere (i.e., carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, sulphur hexafluoride).

Solar energy from the sun hits the earth and a significant amount of the energy then re-radiates out into space. Greenhouse gases affect the atmosphere by inhibiting the reflection of solar energy that hits the earth's surface, thereby trapping extra heat and warming the earth's atmosphere. The impacts of global warming on climate, water, sea level and other areas are widely believed to be potentially significant and catastrophic if the process of climate change is not addressed.

City Leadership
The City of Vancouver has shown significant leadership on the issue of climate change in the past 15 years, both in many City initiatives as well as advocating and organizing at the provincial and federal level.

Following Council's support of the Federal Government's ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, the City has moved forward with new plans to directly address the City's GHG emissions through a number of venues, including:

DISCUSSION OF PROCESS

Creating the Cool Vancouver Task Force
The Cool Vancouver Task Force was created in March 2003 by Council to assist the City in developing Climate Change Action Plans (CCAPs) for both the City as a corporation (Corporate CCAP) and for the city as a whole community (Community CCAP). The Task Force members were chosen by Council and the co-chairs of the Task Force to represent a very wide range of interests and groups (a membership list of the Task Force is included in the appendix 1 of the Draft Community CCAP).

Developing a Discussion Paper
During its first three months of operation, the Task Force created a Discussion Paper on GHG Reduction Planning that was presented to Council on June 24, 2003. This Paper explored the issue of climate change and identified a wide range of potential actions to reduce emissions. Council received the Discussion Paper and thanked the Task Force for its work. It then asked the Task Force to continue its work and bring forward a Corporate and Community Climate Change Action Plan for the City. Council approved $30,000 in funds to hire expertise in technical issues to support the Task Force and staff in the creation of these plans.

Developing the Corporate CC AP
During the months of July to October 2003, the Task Force, City staff and the Sheltair Group worked together to create a Corporate Climate Change Action Plan and the first sections of a Community Climate Change Action Plan. The Task Force, in light of the scope of work required to complete these Plans, recommended the Corporate CCAP be brought to Council at the earliest possible date and that the Community CCAP follow.

On December 2, 2003, Council unanimously approved the Corporate CCAP, including funding for its immediate implementation, which has since commenced.

Energy and Emissions Inventory and Baselines
In order to set a target for emissions reductions below 1990 levels, the City first had to identify its levels of emissions in 1990. City staff worked closely with the GVRD, BC Hydro, Terasen, TransLink's AirCare Division and others to establish detailed energy consumption and emissions baselines for the past 15 years. This process is described more fully in a later section.

Developing the Draft Community CCAP
The Task Force has been working closely with staff from many departments through the coordination work of the Sustainability Group to develop the Draft Community CCAP, since fall 2003.

Consultation
The Draft CCAP needs to be discussed with a broad range of stakeholders and the public. This process is described more thoroughly in the next section.

Final Community CCAP
Following consultation, integration of the advice and feedback from the consultation and technical experts, the Task Force and City staff will complete the proposed final Community CCAP and present it to Council for adoption. It is expected that this final plan will be ready by the end of 2004.

Integration of Climate Change Considerations into all City Activity
Currently, the City's Sustainability Group has been coordinating the Task Force and the development of the Corporate and Community CCAPs. This process is thereby through this staff team being integrated into a larger sustainability direction emerging in the City.

More importantly, staff from many City departments have taken Council's direction that addressing climate change is a key policy priority and have therefore put this process at the top of their priority lists, undertaking a significant amount of work in a very short time. The results of this intensity of work is that the City of Vancouver has completed an amount of work on this issue that typically takes much longer in other jurisdictions, and furthermore, has completed this work to a higher level of detail than is often achieved.

CONSULTATION PROCESS

The Cool Vancouver Task Force has been the focus of consultation on this plan. The Task Force represents several dozen stakeholders and community interests on climate change issues and the City has had the benefit of their direct guidance and feedback on issues over the entire process to develop the CCAPs. However, more widespread discussion is now needed, with other stakeholders and the public.

The Task Force is submitting this Draft Community CCAP to Council for permission to commence a several-month public consultation process with the community and stakeholders, following which a final Community CCAP will be submitted to Council for approval and implementation.

Purpose for Consultation
At the end of the consultation process, staff and the Task Force would like to have identified a pragmatic path to achieve each one of the proposed strategies for reduction. The CCAP outlines a series of strategies and "sub targets" for the amount of emissions reductions proposed to achieve through each area. As noted earlier, the City of Vancouver cannot implement all aspects of this plan - it will take effort from everybody. Thus the "action plan" needs to be created "with" those who will be responsible for implementing it.

The purpose of the consultation process therefore includes:

The Consultation Plan
A proposed consultation process has several basic elements including:

Consultation Specialists and Funding
The City requested Expressions of Interest / Proposals in the fall of 2003 from interested companies to lead the consultation process. Following a full objective evaluation of the submissions including staff from several City departments, the group led by Karyo Communications was unanimously selected as the best suited to lead the consultation process. The Karyo team offers significant experience and demonstrated ability to deal with issues around emissions reduction measures in buildings, transportation, intergovernmental relations, sustainability, and other key issues. Karyo also offers a full service communications capacity to support widespread public information dissemination.

The City has established the first phase of funding for the consultation process at $75,000, sourced from $50,000 approved by Council for this purpose (December, 2003) in addition to $25,000 from the 2003 award funding from the GVRD's Sustainability Enterprise Fund (2003).

The City has also applied to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) Green Municipal Enabling Funds (GMEF) for an additional $100,000 to assist in the funding of the consultation and technical support for the Community CCAP. It is uncertain when the City will hear on whether this application has been successful, but notice is anticipated by July, 2004 - early in the consultation process.

The proposed consultation process has been structured around two phases of funding, to be successful with or without the GMEF grant. If the City receives the GMEF grant, a more comprehensive consultation process is possible, including additional research into community attitudes and willingness to make changes to support reduced emissions, and developing a social marketing strategy to promote emissions reduction.

DISCUSSION OF ISSUES in the COMMUNITY CCAP

Community Emissions Profile
The emissions inventory was a complex process that was completed through identifying how much energy Vancouverites used in their buildings (utility bills) and its associated emissions. Transportation emissions were then calculated through integrating mileage with fuel sales for vehicles registered in Vancouver. Emissions were then calculated based on that fuel use.

This piece of work was a significant undertaking, but ultimately it was successful. Staff believe that Vancouver's emissions inventory is detailed and credible and establishes a defensible target for reductions. Staff also note that there will be challenges in the future in monitoring progress due to changes in the AirCare protocols, and this issue is raised in the Community CCAP, and as a result, staff are recommending that the City commence discussions with the Province and ICBC about developing more reliable methods for tracking mileage in the city.

Emissions summary
In order to quantify the total emission reductions required to meet the 6% reduction target the following emissions inventory numbers have been established:

Meeting our emission reduction target means that we must reduce our forecasted annual GHG emissions by 410,000 tonnes between now and 2012.

Developing the emissions inventory
The above inventory was developed largely in accordance with FCM's PCP emissions measurement protocol that is the standard for municipalities across Canada. Vancouver's inventory varied slightly in methodology from the PCP protocol around transportation-related emissions.

The PCP protocol would allocate to Vancouver's inventory all emissions from vehicles that travel anywhere within Vancouver's boundaries, including vehicles that only travel "through" Vancouver. As a further example, this method would allocate emissions regionally from a vehicle travelling on local roads (such as Kingsway) from Surrey to West Vancouver (depending on its route) partly to Surrey, partly to New Westminster, partly to Burnaby, partly to Vancouver and finally partly to West Vancouver.

The problem that was identified with this method is that it does not sufficiently recognize or support local land use and transportation policy initiatives to develop mixed use, complete, walkable communities or decreases in per capita vehicle use within Vancouver. With the PCP protocol emissions from other municipalities who may not be so aggressively promoting walkable communities would be allocated to Vancouver regardless of Vancouver's actions.

An alternative measurement method for transportation emissions
Working with the GVRD, Vancouver has undertaken an alternative emissions measurement protocol for light duty vehicles (including cars, light trucks, mini-vans, etc) that is more "policy-supportive" to efforts to reduce automobile transportation within Vancouver. The new measurement method includes Vancouver's emissions inventory taking responsibility for "all emissions associated with a light duty vehicle registered to a resident / business within Vancouver", regardless of where that vehicle travels. This approach will more directly recognize through monitoring Vancouver's emissions inventory, successes from Vancouver's emissions reductions policies.

During the drafting of the Draft Community CCAP, both staff from the City of Vancouver and the GVRD concurred that this measurement approach best supports the policies of the Livable Region Strategic Plan, the emerging Sustainable Region Initiative, as well a whole host of Vancouver's policies.

Vancouver utilized AirCare data to establish the mileage associated with vehicles owned by residents of Vancouver. However AirCare plans to reduce its schedule of checks for new cars to once ever 3 years commencing in 2005. This change in practice will make any accurate measurement of mileage difficult in the future. Due to this challenge, it is recommended that Council instruct staff to approach the Province and ICBC to require mileage be recorded at the time of auto insurance renewal and that this information be provided to municipalities on annual basis. It is expected that this information would be associated with the first 3 symbols of the postal code of the owners address. As such, mileage would be available at a level not only highly useful for emissions monitoring, but also for larger scale transportation planning.

EMISSIONS REDUCTION TARGETS

The following discussion on targets examines measurement methods and proposed dates for achieving those targets.

Measurement methods
The Draft Community CCAP was developed around a working target of achieving a 6% reduction in emissions below 1990 levels for Vancouver by 2010 - based on all emissions coming from within City limits (geographically based rather than population based). This target was recommended by the Task Force and approved in principle by Council as "a starting point" for planning. This target translated to a 425,000 tonne reduction in annual GHG emissions by 2010 from all sources within Vancouver's city limits.

During the development of the Draft CCAP, additional perspectives on the targets have emerged that have important implications to Vancouver, including:

Staff are recommending that the municipal target of a 6% reduction in emissions be understood as the city's "fair share" of Canada's 6% target based on population. The reason for this recommendation is that this revised target recognises population growth but does not place an extra burden upon faster growing communities while excusing slower growing communities from taking any action at all.

The national per person emissions reduction commitment means that all Canadians must reduce their GHG emissions by 27% compared to 1990 levels by 2012. This target is arrived at by combining the estimated national population increase of 21% from 1990 to 2012 with a 6% overall GHG reduction target for the country.

Vancouver's "fair share of Canada's 6% reduction target" based on its projected 2012 population translates into a 410,000 tonne reduction in annual GHG emissions from the 2012 business-as-usual emissions forecast.

Target completion dates
The Draft Community CCAP was originally developed around a target date of 2010. This date falls in the middle of the Kyoto measurement window (2008-2012) and corresponds to the recommendations of the PCP protocol and the City's hosting of the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Staff are now concerned that a 2010 target is likely not possible to attain, even with extreme effort. The reason for this concern lies not in whether the reductions can be achieved, but rather in how long it will take to implement the required changes, programs and retrofits, in the context of the market and the timelines for senior government investment in reduction measures.

The recommended schedule for reaching the 6% reduction target is now as follows:

Staff have received advice from many stakeholders who have noted that while setting a challenging target is important to stimulate immediate action, the City should not choose a target that is not reachable, as it may undermine commitment and momentum to the long term emissions reductions. As one discussion described it, "...emissions reductions initiatives in the City should not be seen as an ambitious `post-Christmas diet,' rather it should be more like a long term, sensible change in lifestyle."

The Task Force has noted that the City should view the Kyoto Protocol target is only the first step of a series of emissions reductions that the scientific community has called for in order to "stabilize the climate change process." This will likely mean that following 2010, new global emissions reduction targets will be negotiated, including a continuing mandate for Vancouver to make further reductions from those in this Plan.

Sequestration is a favourite topic of climate change discussions at the federal level, recognizing that trees capture (sequester) carbon out of the atmosphere during the process of photosynthesis. This argument has some validity for climate change planning at a national scale, however it has limited applicability to Vancouver. It is expected that the direct climate change benefits from sequestered carbon is expected to be less than 1,000 tonnes per year for a significant tree-planting campaign, including 5,400 trees net annual increase in the city (estimated current tree planting rate).

A REVIEW OF THE DRAFT COMMUNITY CCAP ACTIONS

Changes are required in many areas to meet the proposed emissions reductions target, including:

This Plan addresses both of the above areas, and while it proposes a list of things we each can do in our daily lives to reduce emissions, it primarily focuses on changes to policy and programs in key agencies. The reason being for this focus is that to achieve significant emissions reductions over the long term, we need to make these "foundational" changes in how we deal with energy and emissions with respect to our buildings, transportation systems and others.

The following reviews the primary initiatives addressed in both of the above areas in the Draft Community CCAP.

PERSONAL LIFESTYLE

The Draft Community CCAP outlines a range of areas where Vancouverites can take personal action to educate themselves and take action to reduce energy use and emissions. These include actions with respect to:

The federal government has launched a "one-tonne challenge" to support Canadian citizens reducing their emissions through personal behaviour. Many other organizations are supporting personal choices that reduce emissions, including the Suzuki Foundation, Better Environmentally Sound Transportation, and Vancouver's Society Promoting Environmental Conservations (SPEC) - all of whom worked with the City on the Task Force.

INSTITUTIONAL POLICY AND PROGRAMS

As noted above, in addition to personal lifestyle choices, the Plan calls for action in the following policy and program areas:

The following outlines the key issues associated with achieving the desired emissions reductions in each area.

BUILDINGS

Buildings account for a significant portion of the city's emissions. Emissions from buildings come primarily from energy used (natural gas and electricity) for space and water heating, as well as from lighting and "equipment" (plug-loads), and others.

In the long run, the most cost-effective approach to making buildings more energy efficient is to simply build new buildings to be more energy efficient. However, because this Plan is focused on achieving emissions reductions in the short term (2012) as well as the long run, much of this Plan has had to focus on retrofitting existing buildings for increased energy efficiency. Even with a significant growth rate, the total number of existing buildings far outnumbers new buildings that will be built by 2012.

Buildings are organized for the purpose of this plan into 3 categories:

These building types are further classified as "existing (for retrofits)" or "new".

Existing Residential Buildings

The Draft Community CCAP calls for a significant program of retrofits in existing homes through the measures below. The target for this housing group is 35% of detached/semi-detached non-market housing will be retrofitted to a level that improves their energy efficiency by 25% by 2012. This is a challenging but achievable target.

The Draft Community CCAP outlines a wide range of measures proposed to achieve this target including:

Existing Commercial and Institutional Building Retrofits
Commercial buildings (offices, retail, warehouses, and institutional) are another significant source of GHG emissions in Vancouver. Improving the energy efficiency of the existing building stock is one of the five central strategies in this plan.

The Draft Community CCAP calls for significant retrofitting of commercial and institutional buildings to increase efficiency through measures described below. The 2012 target for retrofits includes:

As with residential retrofits, this is a very challenging target, but there is significant expertise and interest in the commercial buildings community for this. In particular, BC's Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) has launched a "Go Green" campaign that assists commercial building owners and operators to achieve more sustainable building performance. It is expected that stakeholders will work with BOMA to identify the most effective path forward on this part of the target.



New Buildings
New energy efficiency standards for new buildings is one of the most cost- and time-effective long term strategies available to the City to achieve emissions reductions in the future. Since relatively few new buildings will be built in Vancouver before 2010 compared to its current building stock, the implications of this measure are not expected to be significant to a 2010 or 2012 target, but rather to be critical to longer term reductions. The Draft CCAP outlines a range of measures proposed to accomplish this. Two specific measures should be highlighted.

Work is being undertaken already on these issues under the direction of the Chief Building Official in consultation with both the Planning Department and the development industry. Staff are proposing to report back to Council on the best path to move forward on these energy efficiency requirement upgrades prior to the end of July 2004.

TRANSPORTATION

Mobile sources such as cars, trucks, and heavy-duty construction equipment are expected to account for over 1.1 million tonnes of GHG emissions (over 35% of all Vancouver emissions) by 2010. The good news in this category is that the growth of vehicle mileage within the city has not increased at anywhere near the rate it has elsewhere in the region. It is believed that this is due to Vancouver's aggressive promotion of mixed use, compact, walkable neighbourhoods and higher density housing.


The City has some experience with these systems (geothermal and others) but it is expected that many more opportunities exist and that emissions reductions can be achieved through them.

ADAPTATION STRATEGY

Climate change action plans need to address two things:

The majority of effort in the Draft Community CCAP is directed at reducing GHG emissions through policy, programs and behaviour. However, Vancouver will likely experience a range of impacts from climate change that has already occurred or will occur before the global climate change process can be slowed and stabilized. The extent of these impacts is unknown at this time, however, with this in mind, the Cool Vancouver Task Force has included in the Draft Community CCAP a recommendation that the City create a "Climate Change Adaptation Strategy" for the city. No timelines have been set for this, as it is not seen as an "urgent" matter. It is expected that timelines and a process will be developed in conjunction with the consultation process for inclusion in the final Community CCAP.

INITIATIVES FOR IMMEDIATE IMPLEMENTATION

The Task Force recognized both the need to undertake consultation on the Draft Action Plan, as well as the need to take action on some things right away. Staff also believe that significant benefit can be achieved from commencing implementation in a limited way, some of the actions in the CCAP in a manner that is integrated into the consultation process.

The highest profile of these early implementation initiatives is the proposed Corporate Climate Change (C3) Challenge. This element includes launching a friendly competition between staff from the City of Vancouver and employees of other organizations such as BC Hydro, Terasen, GVRD, and others, to see which organization's staff can achieve the greatest proportional number of home audits and/or retrofits for energy efficiency. It is expected that through this project, many homes could become more energy efficient right away and that all organizations involved (all of whom are promoting emissions reductions) would gain significant value from insights from their staff's experiences addressing emissions in their personal lives. Staff are proposing to report back for permission to proceed once a plan has been created and funding identified for the project.

PRIORITY MEASURES

As noted earlier, some of the measures proposed in the Draft Community CCAP are within City jurisdiction, and many are not. The following outlines a recommended list of high priority items the City might consider from the Draft Community CCAP, and a summary of the responsibilities for the remaining amounts of reductions.

The collection of initiatives that the city might have a good deal of influence or control over and could take a new (or renewed) proactive role in implementing include:

The above list could result in 229,000t of emission reductions below the projected 2012 emissions in a business as usual context. This is over 50% of the total reduction required to meet the proposed 6% target.

Two additional activities that are already part of existing work programs include:
· Improved energy efficiency standards for new construction (ASHRAE and move to CBIP) (12,000t)
· Non-market housing retrofits in association with the provincial government (12,000t)

Over one quarter of the proposed targeted emission reductions (135,000t) depends on Federal implementation of their proposed improvements in vehicle fuel efficiency standards noted in the federal climate change plan.

The remaining 20,000t of targeted reductions arise from the expanded use of ethanol blended fuels, an assumption of improved industrial efficiency, employee energy awareness, and small commercial retrofits.

FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS

The only immediate cost implication of this Report is that contingent upon receiving $50,000 from the Province and the Federal Government, $25,000 would be required from contingency reserve to hire and provide support for a temporary Community Energy Efficiency Coordinator to begin implementing some of the measures proposed in this Draft Plan.

There are financial implications to many of the recommendations in the Draft Community CCAP, however, most of these implications are unknown at this time, and extensive discussion is expected during the consultation stage and during implementation of many of the projects around financing strategies.

The primary reasons for unknown costs at this time are:

The scale of costs for implementing this plan are also connected to the final target and completion date chosen for the plan, as the proposed date may change due to feedback during consultation. The greater the reductions chosen and the shorter the time to meet the target, the greater the cost will be.

A strategy needs to be developed to coordinate opportunities and partnerships to harness funding and resources to implement the actions outlined in the plan. The financing strategy will need to address the range of types of funding could be accessible, including:

The Toronto Atmospheric Fund (TAF) is a successful initiative to promote energy efficiency and reduced emissions in Toronto. It includes a significant endowment that the City of Toronto established through the sale of a piece of publicly owned land. This endowment serves to support the core staff in the TAF office as well as provide a yearly budget for both grants and revolving loans, where the loan amount is partially or entirely paid off with savings resulting from energy efficiencies achieved from the initiatives. It is recommended that Council instruct the Director of Finance to work with other staff and stakeholders during the consultation process to evaluate the potential for establishing a similar fund in Vancouver and to bring recommendations to Council with the final Community CCAP.

CONCLUSION

The Draft Community CCAP developed by the Cool Vancouver Task Force is a strong plan with a diversity of approaches to address GHG reductions throughout the city. The Task Force and staff believe that this Plan is now ready for a discussion with key stakeholders and the public. The Task Force and City staff have developed a consultation plan to support the review of this Draft of the Community CCAP, in order to garner detailed feedback from the community and stakeholders.

The range of proposed emissions reduction measures in this plan are as far reaching as the sources of emissions in the city. They include the involvement of a significant scope of stakeholders and as such, the discussion should be as broad of scope as resources will allow.

The financial implications of this Plan have not yet been analysed in detail, and this issue will be of high priority in the consultation process.

The development of this Action Plan is an important experience for the Vancouver community as it both positions us to increase environmental quality and economic efficiencies within the city, as well as positioning the city to be seen as pursuing a path of responsible leadership amongst world cities, as the Kyoto Protocol's time of reckoning comes closer.

The work the Cool Vancouver Task Force has done has created a powerful Draft Action Plan for the community, and one that represents a wide range of interests and insights. From this position, staff believe that the consultation process, for which this report requests permission to engage, will be one of focused discussion and excellent advice to the City on how to proceed.

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APPENDICES

Appendix A - The Draft Community Climate Change Action Plan
with Appendix A1: Background
Appendix A2: Emissions Profile Methodology

Appendix B - The Consultation Plan

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Appendix A - The Draft Community Climate Change Action Plan

Appendix B - The Consultation Plan

LINK TO APPENDICES A AND B

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