The City of Victoria is expecting to make big strides this year toward its goal of reducing carbon emissions by 50 per cent by 2030, says a report from its climate-action team.
This year will see the city implement and expand climate-action initiatives to reach what it calls an ambitious emission-reduction goal in the next eight years.
“We’re really moving into an implementation phase,” said Laura Berndt, Victoria’s manager of energy and climate action. “More and more of our high-impact initiatives and programs are developed now and we’re really focusing on scaling those up and the successful implementation and uptake of those programs.”
The report said in 2020 the city saw a 16 per cent reduction in emissions versus 2007, partially a result of changed routines due to the pandemic.
Last year, the city finished planning initiatives like its corporate energy and emissions management plan, an electric vehicle strategy and a green-fleet plan for municipal vehicles.
This year, Berndt said, the focus will be on launching a public electric-vehicle charging network and working with Saanich and the Capital Regional District to implement a new residential energy retrofit program.
“We’re kind of over that first hurdle of all the planning and strategizing, and now we’re into how do we make the uptake as successful as possible and as fast as possible and how do we continue to scale it?” she said.
Expansion and adoption of new programs requires making it easy for the average person to get involved, and to that end the city intends to install more than 100 electric-vehicle charging stations this year, while enacting the retrofit program that offers grants to homeowners to improve the energy efficiency of their homes.
“Those are two big programs that are really kind of kicking off this year so that’s kind of our really big goal post,” said Berndt.
Those programs build on initiatives already underway like the $5.8 million green fleet program that pledges to replace 143 city vehicles with electric options over the next nine years; a series of energy improvements at city facilities like City Hall, Crystal Pool and the Victoria Conference Centre; a program incentivizing the switch to heat pumps from oil that to date has allowed 200 homes to install heat pumps; a broad spectrum of investment in infrastructure to encourage walking, biking and taking public transit; and curbside yard waste collection that resulted in a 49 per cent increase in organics collected for composting and a five per cent drop in landfilled waste.
Berndt said the successes they’ve seen and continue to bank on are partly due to the willingness of both residents and public officials to buy into the need for the programs.
“We see a lot of people really eager to do their part or to take some action,” she said. “And that’s what the city is really trying to do — figure out how can we support people to make these changes, to take these actions and what sort of tools can we provide that will assist.”
She said there’s no room for complacency. “As much as we like to say things are going well, and we’re doing good so far, we know that we do need to continue to accelerate and keep our foot on the pedal, so to speak. Really, the risk is that we can’t scale it as fast as we’d like to or as much as we’d like to.”
