St. Albert has beaten its 2020 greenhouse gas reduction target, suggests a new report. But it’s not because we’ve suddenly gone green, cautions the city’s environmental manager.
The City of St. Albert published its 2015 Report on the Environment this week. The annual report tracks the city’s progress towards nine goals dealing with air, land, water, and people, set out in its environmental master plan.
In a stunning turnaround, the report shows that St. Albert has gone from being not even close to its 2020 target for greenhouse gas emission reductions (six per cent below 2008 levels, or under 670,000 tonnes a year) to blowing past it in just one year.
Last year’s report found that city residents produced some 730,004 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions in 2013 – equivalent to burning about 780 million pounds of coal, suggests the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s online emissions calculator.
This year’s report shows that those emissions plunged to 654,863 tonnes in 2014 and dropped again to 652,673 last year. This suggests that St. Albert beat its community emissions target six years ahead of schedule.
One big reason for this drop was a change in Alberta’s electricity mix and a change in how the city calculated its emissions this year, explained Leah Kongsrude, the city’s director of strategic services.
“Previously we were only calculating our community (emissions) every five years,” she said, as the city based them on information from Environment Canada.
But the province has recently started publishing more up-to-date information on the emissions intensity of Alberta’s electricity grid, allowing the city to do this calculation with greater frequency and accuracy. That means the city’s emissions inventory now reflects recent changes to the provincial power grid, which has become greener as wind and natural gas have replaced coal.
“Some of (the drop) is not because we’re doing better. It’s because Alberta is doing better.”
The last two years also saw unusually warm winters and relatively slow growth in St. Albert, both of which would have curtailed energy use and emissions, Kongsrude said. The city has also gained new homes built to higher energy standards.
The Environmental Advisory Committee (EAC) will likely re-examine the city’s community emissions target this year, Kongsrude said.
They will also probably take a look at the environmental stewardship target, as the city has surpassed it five years ahead of schedule.
The city has done energy and water audits of 11 of its buildings to address its corporate emissions, about half of which come from buildings, Kongsrude continued. Those audits suggest a variety of solar and energy efficiency improvements the city can make to reduce its emissions, and will be presented to city council later this month.
On the community front, the city plans to distribute energy audit kits through the St. Albert Public Library this year so that residents can do their own audits, Kongsrude said.
“There’s no better incentive for decreasing natural resource use than cost,” she continued, so she said she hoped the provincial carbon tax would encourage further emission reductions in the city.
The report suggests that the city’s progress towards its water conservation targets has also stalled somewhat, as water use rose by a litre to 252 L/capita/day. The city’s 2020 goal is to reduce water use to 200 L/capita/day.
Last year’s toilet rebate program should save the city about 27 million litres of water a year, and it might return this year, Kongsrude said.
“The big change is going to be around the water conservation bylaw,” she said, which kicks in this 2018. That law will set water efficiency standards for fixtures in all new homes and restrict daytime outdoor watering during the summer (which the EAC found could potentially cut summer water use by about 15 per cent).
The city is also looking at bringing in smart water meters that will give residents real-time data on their water use, Kongsrude said.
“That’s a really great incentive for encouraging people to reduce their water use,” she said, as they’ll be able to see how their use changes over time.
The full report is available in this edition of the Gazette.
