Community Climate Action Plan for Squamish

March 2021 - Climate Action website launched.

Check it out here: squamishclimateaction.ca

Updated July 8, 2020

Thank you to everyone who attended the open house and/or completed the public survey!

A draft Community Climate Action Plan was presented to Council on March 10, 2020. Based on Council feedback, the Draft CCAP was updated and unanimously approved by Council on April 7, 2020.

Recent Actions:

Community feedback indicated that speaker series and events are the most preferred way of public engagement and communication.

The District hosted a series of climate change talks to:

Foster an engaged community of learning and climate action in Squamish, in spite of the current realities of COVID-19.
Provide relevant information about climate change that is specific to the community of Squamish.
Provide further information about the CCAP.
Provide teachers with climate action learning materials.

View the virtual lectures here.

Background

The Community Climate Action Plan (CCAP) is designed to guide Squamish towards a low carbon future, while at the same time recommending actions that will increase livability, resilience and prosperity. The plan reflects the need to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius with significant action by 2030 as per the 2018 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Significant public participation informed the CCAP, highlights of which are as follows:

A Climate Leadership Team was established to guide the process and provide feedback at key times;
A Stakeholder Workshop with industrial, commercial and institutional participants was held;
A Public Open House was held on February 3, 2020 with over 80 people in attendance;
A Public Survey was conducted with 284 responses. Thanks for your input!

Overview of the Plan

Steps to developing our Community Climate Action Plan:

Quantify current greenhouse gas emissions and sources (create an inventory);
Determine our emissions over time if we continue without taking action;
Identify our reduction targets;
Identify the actions we can take to meet our targets;
Establish an implementation and evaluation plan for the actions.

Scope

The plan will consider emissions and potential actions across the community of Squamish. This includes, but is not limited to, emissions created by the District of Squamish operations (corporate emissions). Typically, community climate action plans consider most emissions that are emitted within the municipality, but not the upstream emissions. For example, gasoline that is burned within the community is included, but any emissions that were created in order to extract and refine the gasoline elsewhere are not counted.

The table below, which corresponds to Figure 9 in the CCAP, shows the District’s Community Emissions, which is the Scope of the Plan, as well as other sources of emissions that are related to Squamish.

Figure 1 Estimated emissions of Woodfibre LNG, woodwaste Landfills, marine travel, land use/land use change/forestry (LULUCF), and scope 3 emissions, compared to the 2017 standard methodology community inventory.

The Figure below, which corresponds to Figure 6 in the CCAP, shows the proportion of our current community emissions by sector. Total emissions as of 2017 are approximately 97,000 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent, or 4.8 tonnes per person per year.

CCAP2

Understanding the District’s Role in Reducing Emissions

The District's ability to control or influence greenhouse gas emissions varies between sources of emissions and potential actions. The District has direct control or influence over some types of decisions, whereas others are determined by other levels of government and/or the individual choices of citizens.

CCAP3

Big Moves, Strategies and Actions

The CCAP is organized into Six Big Moves. Each Big Move has several Strategies, and each Strategy has one to eight Actions that should be taken.

CCAP4

The Big Moves and their overall contribution to emissions reduction are represented in the following Figure, which is included in the CCAP Executive Summary.

Figure 3: The Six Big Moves and their overall modelled emissions reductions.

Please refer to the Executive Summary and complete Community Climate Action Plan to learn more about the Big Moves, Strategies and Actions, and their contribution to emissions reduction.