Community climate action plan - Resilient Hamilton

NRU
Oct. 21, 2015
By Leah Wong

The City of Hamilton is finalizing its plan to reduce non-industrial greenhouse gas emissions to mitigate the impacts of climate change on the city.

At its meeting Monday Hamilton Board of Health-which comprises all members of council-endorsed a community climate change action plan. The plan seeks to provide the community with practical approaches to reducing emissions and to prepare it for the impacts of climate change.

“We need to up the city’s game when it comes to climate change preparation. We need to do more and we believe we need to do more as a priority,” Environment Hamilton board member David Carson said in a deputation. “Council should use this plan as a launch pad to commit to climate change actions with a set of specific initiatives and directions to staff .”

One of the challenges for Hamilton is that its industrial and steel sectors are responsible for the largest portion of emissions. While there have been overall emission reductions in these sectors, it is due in part to the slowdown of the economy. Largely regulated by the provincial and federal government, the city has little ability to impact further reductions.

The community action plan instead focuses on other major contributors to emissions such as residential, transportation and commercial sources. The plan has been designed to work with businesses and residents to address community sources of emissions.

“The good news is that we are seeing emission trends falling in Hamilton. We’ve actually seen a 29 per cent reduction in emissions. Our target was 20 per cent by 2020,” Hamilton air quality and climate change senior project manager Brian Montgomery told the board. “Part of the reason we did a community climate change plan is that we’ve set new targets-50 per cent reductions by 2030 and 80 per cent by 2050.”

Public engagement is a priority for the city and played an integral role in the development of the plan. More than 65 residents volunteered for taskforces, which developed ideas for local actions addressing eight key issues associated with climate change. The issues addressed were agriculture and food; education and awareness; energy; infrastructure; land use, buildings and built form; local economy and business; transportation and water and natural ecosystems.

“Although [the themes] look to be in silos, they’re not,” said Montgomery. “Decisions will influence the actions in each of these themes.”

The task forces have recommended 10 actions that could be implemented within one to three years and will result in significant emission reductions. Implementation of these actions-some of which are already in progress-is expected to result in a total annual gross reduction of around 283,467 tonnes of carbon dioxide. Montgomery also said that implementing these actions is expected to result in $69.1-million in cost savings to households, businesses and governments.

Staff have recommended forming a climate change action committee, which will monitor activities and provide strategic direction, input and expert knowledge.