Saanich's first climate action plan is ready to go to work.
And if council approves the plan next Monday, the Saanich of 2020 could be a municipality with 5,000 electric cars, older homes that have been retrofitted to make them more energy-efficient and municipal operations that produce no landfill waste.
The plan is a blueprint of how the region's largest municipality plans to reduce at least 33 per cent of its greenhouse-gas emissions by 2020.
It sets targets, and outlines how residents and the municipality alike can decrease their emissions.
The plan puts Saanich in the forefront of municipalities in dealing with global warming, says Mayor Frank Leonard.
"Staff from other municipalities are phoning our staff asking for copies of the report, so we're seen as a best practice on this file. It's our intention to stay there," Leonard said.
The plan calls for changes in four areas: transportation, buildings, waste and energy alternatives. It outlines plans to reduce transportation emissions by 21.7 per cent, building emissions by seven per cent and waste by 3.1 per cent, with another 1.3 per cent reduced by using energy alternatives. Building emissions come from the natural gas and electricity used in them.
Municipalities have the most influence over transportation, residential and commercial-building emissions as well as solid-waste emissions, the report says.
The plan starts by using greenhouse-gas-emission figures from 2007 -- the year the provincial government used to develop annual inventories for each municipality -- as a baseline. Saanich had 521,000 tonnes of greenhouse-gas emissions that year. If the municipality takes no action, emissions are expected to reach more than 577,000 tonnes by 2020.
About 62 per cent of the emissions are related to vehicles, 30 per cent to buildings and eight per cent to landfill waste.
To reach the minimum 33 per cent reduction, 228,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases must be removed from the community's annual emissions, lowering total annual emissions to 350,000 tonnes. About one tonne of greenhouse gas is produced for every 400 litres of gasoline used by a car.
A lot can be done by having the municipality lead by example, the report says. In 2007, Saanich set a goal of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions from municipal operations 10 per cent by 2010. It was reached two years early.
The plan says 20 per cent of municipal operations will be powered from green sources by 2020.
It suggests the municipality have charging stations for electric cars at key centres, and promote amenities for car sharing, electric vehicles, electric bikes and scooters in new developments.
Increasing the average efficiency of Saanich homes and commercial buildings by 30 per cent over the next decade would eliminate more than 20,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases. While the focus has been on making new buildings energy-efficient, less attention has been paid to reducing energy use in the large stock of existing buildings, according to the report.
Of the 33,000 existing dwellings in Saanich, half were built before 1970. Retrofitting those to be more energy-efficient will be a priority.
The plan's success depends largely on how well the community embraces the goals, something Leonard says he isn't worried about: "By and large, Saanich residents expect Saanich to be a leader on environmental issues."
For information, see www.climateaction.saanich.ca
