City Initiatives
The City of Burlington is planning a Take Action Burlington - Community Climate Change Summit on Thursday, May 6, 2010 at the Royal Botanical Gardens. For more information, please visit www.burlington.ca/takeaction.
The Partners for Climate Protection (PCP) program is a partnership between the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) and the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) encouraging municipal governments to commit to achieving reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
The community benefits for municipal participation in PCP include:
- Realize financial savings from reduced utility and fuel consumption;
- Reduce air pollution that leads to smog, acid rain, climate change and health problems; and
- Create jobs and stimulate community economic development.
To track progress, PCP encourages each participating community to commit to achieving five milestones both corporately and for the community. These are:
- Conduct a baseline emissions inventory and forecast
- Adopt an emissions reduction target for the forecast year
- Develop a local action plan
- Implement policies and measures
- Monitor and verify results.
The City of Burlington joined the program in 2002. In 2004, staff completed the first milestone. To achieve this milestone, the City completed a greenhouse gas inventory (profile of energy use and emissions) using PCP software for both municipal operations and the community for the base year 1994 and forecasted energy use and emissions to 2010 for municipal operations and the community.
In April 2007, staff presented report COMSERV-4/07 titled Agenda for Action: A Corporate Action Plan to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions. This report covered both milestones 2 (setting a corporate target) and 3 (corporate action plan). The report was deferred to the city’s strategic plan process. All of the initiatives identified in the Agenda for Action were incorporated into the City's strategic plan titled Future Focus Seven. The six goals identified in the original Agenda for Action included:
Goal #1: Assign responsibility for energy management through the corporate facility management review process.
Action: As a result of a corporate restructuring exercise, energy management now lies under a newly created department (as of January 1, 2009) called Corporate Strategic Initiatives (CSI).
Goal #2: Implement systems to track, monitor and report on corporate energy demand and consumption for electricity, natural gas, and water, providing the necessary financial and staff resources to administer them.
Action: This is one of the items assigned to the new CSI department.
Goal #3: Identify and ultimately implement a sustainable building standard for new and retrofit city facilities such as LEED or Green Globes, with an emphasis on energy efficiency. Consideration should be given to the use of renewable energy.
Action: A Corporate Sustainable Building policy was adopted by Council in May 2010.
Goal #4: Develop and adopt a green purchasing policy or standard with guidelines to assist staff with implementation (eg. require ENERGY STAR® rated appliances and office equipment).
Action: Purchasing staff in the Finance Department will be reporting to Council on this issue.
Goal #5: Green the corporate fleet to minimize overall fuel consumption and emissions by right sizing vehicles in relation to job function at the time of leasing or purchasing. Opportunities will also be identified where appropriate to increase the use of cleaner fuels.
Action: Greening the Corporate Fleet Transition Strategy was adopted by Council in June 2008.
Goal #6: Implement a plan to replace remaining traffic signals with LED fixtures.
Action: Completed in 2008. Media release.