After five years of trying to reduce local greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs),\u00a0Sault Ste. Marie’s environmental sustainability committee has admitted defeat.<\/p>\n
Our GHG emissions are increasing, not decreasing, the city committee says.<\/p>\n
It’s now calling for city council to create a new\u00a0GHG reduction plan and get serious about spending enough to reverse that trend.<\/p>\n
“Our emissions are not trending downward,” committee chair Donna Hilsinger told a meeting at the Ronald A. Irwin Civic Centre last week.<\/p>\n
“We’re not on track with our 2030 targets that were in the 2020 plan,” Hilsinger said.<\/p>\n
“We’ve had community emissions increased. We’ve had corporate emissions increased.<\/p>\n
“Both are expected to rise from the original baseline year (2017) by 14 per cent\u00a0by year 2037, which is 20 years into the plan,” Hilsinger said.<\/p>\n
Greenhouse gases are things like water vapour, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and ozone, that trap heat and cause the Earth’s temperature to rise.<\/p>\n
Industries are the Sault’s biggest source of GHG\u00a0emissions, based on\u00a0their consumption of natural gas.<\/p>\n
After that, the second biggest GHG\u00a0producer is on-road transportation.<\/p>\n
Algoma Steel says its transition to electric arc furnace steelmaking will cut\u00a0CO2 emissions by up to three\u00a0million tonnes a\u00a0year.<\/p>\n
That’s a\u00a070 per cent reduction from the company’s current emissions, but Hilsinger’s committee says more needs to be done to meet the city’s GHG\u00a0targets.<\/p>\n
On Dec.\u00a014, 2020,\u00a0city councillors unanimously approved\u00a0a GHG reduction plan aimed at achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, with interim targets of reducing community emissions by five per cent and corporate emissions by 10 per cent, by 2030.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Despite good action progress, emissions are not trending downward\u00a0and the city is not on track with 2030 targets,” the committee said in a report presented at last week’s meeting.<\/p>\n
The city tracks GHGs from both city-owned sources and the broader community.<\/p>\n
Community emissions are those released by industries, vehicles and other sources making up the community’s total emissions.<\/p>\n
Corporate emissions are defined as\u00a0those directly under the city\u2019s operational control.<\/p>\n
They add up to about\u00a0one per cent of the community’s total emissions, but are targeted for reductions\u00a0because the city is expected to set a leadership\u00a0example.<\/p>\n
The most recent community emissions numbers, based on 2022 data, are up three per cent from the\u00a02017 baseline.<\/p>\n
The most recent city corporate emissions, based on 2023 data, have risen five per cent from 2017.<\/p>\n
“Fossil fuels:\u00a0specifically gasoline, diesel\u00a0and natural gas, are the key drivers,” the report said.<\/p>\n
Updated figures are expected to be released sometime in the next few months, the committee was told.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We are not going in a direction that the plan intended for us to go,” Hilsinger said.<\/p>\n
“This greenhouse gas reduction plan that was formed in 2020,\u00a0ss now at the end of its five-year lifespan…. So what do we do about that?”\u00a0<\/p>\n
The environmental sustainability committee will\u00a0ask city council to rewrite our GHG\u00a0plan.<\/p>\n
And it says it’s going to take money to cut our carbon emissions.<\/p>\n
“We’re looking for spending to be aligned with the targets of that plan so that we can get where we want to go,” Hilsinger said.<\/p>\n
The committee also wants the city to prepare\u00a0a formal annual sustainability audit and to require that every report to city council include a climate impact review.<\/p>\n
Further, it’s pushing for a city\u00a0Environmental Social Governance (ESG) policy.<\/p>\n
“We think it’s extremely important to create an …\u00a0ESG policy\u00a0to ensure cross department accountability, that everybody is rowing in the same boat in the same direction, and that there’s consistent public disclosure that we’re telling the community what’s been accomplished and to develop a sustainable road strategy,” Hilsinger said.<\/p>\n
Mayor Matthew Shoemaker attended last week’s meeting with Tom Vair, the city’s chief administrative officer.<\/p>\n
The mayor and other committee members talked about the importance of active (human-powered) transportation.<\/p>\n
“I get\u00a0the active transportation thing,” Shoemaker said.<\/p>\n
“Certainly we didn’t cut that from the budget. It didn’t make it into the budget as a cost addition, given our economic circumstances.<\/p>\n
“But that’s one where I think there’s lots of will to do it in a year that we can get it done. This is\u00a0the challenge with any municipal organization.<\/p>\n
“We added snow removal this year. We weren’t able to do other things\u00a0and fortunately\u00a0we did add to our snow removal budget, because it’s been a terrible year.<\/p>\n
“So there are other things that we’ll need to prioritize, and there is literally a prioritized list, that’s helpful to know if we’re going to be spending dollars or if we have $30,000 this year, but next year we have $250,000, what are some of those big projects versus small projects,” Shoemaker said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After five years of trying to reduce local greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs),\u00a0Sault Ste. Marie’s environmental sustainability committee has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":528272,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,207527,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-528271","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-sault-ste-marie-city-councilmatthew-shoemakergreenhouse-gasestom-vairdonna-hilsingerenvironmental-sustainability-committee","12":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=528271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/528272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=528271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=528271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=528271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}