City Hall going green: City reduces energy use by 10% in one year

By Andrew Zwicker

Last week the Telegraph reported on the Energy Task Force and its recommendations to council, which included developing an energy plan for the city. That discussion ended without the adoption of the task force's recommendations, but the lines of communication and cooperation between the task force and the City were opened. The continuation of that story is that the City itself had been developing its own energy plan with assistance from the three regional districts, the Columbia Basin Trust and the province--a plan council adopted following last week's Energy Task Force discussion.

A large part of the reason the Energy Task Force's recommendations were not accepted have to do with the fact that the financial and human resources for the corporate side of the equation (the City's operations) had already been taken care of in this recently-adopted GHG reduction plan. That said, the City has also engaged the Task Force to work more closely together with the two local energy utilities (Fortis and Terasen) in coming up with a community energy plan.

Under the provincial Climate Action Charter (in which the City of Rossland is a participant) the City is required to be carbon neutral by 2012. Facing a tall order, city staff came forward last Monday with their recommendations to meet that goal. These recommendations were unanimously adopted by council.

Will Rossland now be carbon neutral by 2012? If the plan is implemented as laid out, the answer will be, technically, 'yes'.

However, if you were to draw a geographic boundary around Rossland and then ask if the area inside that boundary was carbon neutral, the answer would be--paradoxically--'no'.

The plan calls for Rossland to adopt GHG strategies that reduce GHG emissions and energy consumption within the five year financial plan cycle while at the same time neutralizing greenhouse gases on paper through carbon offset purchases. The combination of these strategies should be carbon neutrality for Rossland--on paper--by 2012.

While, theoretically, drastic improvements in energy use and emissions could be achieved in a short period of time with a major (and potentially crippling) capital outlay, the plan noted that the costs required to produce real carbon neutrality immediately would not be recovered over the lifespan of the buildings and fleets being improved. Thus, the carbon-neutral-by-2012 goal will be attained through purchasing carbon credits to offset City emissions.

In 2008, using funds from the CBT and the three regional districts, Rossland established its baseline energy use and emissions. This information is now being used to gauge the city's improvement over the course of this plan. At that time the City's GHG emissions were measured at 422 tons per year. In 2009, GHG levels remained the same at 422 tons per year. Working with Pacific Trust, a crown corporation set up by the province to both buy and sell carbon credits, it would have cost the city $11,500 to buy their way to 'carbon neutrality'.

In 2008, the city's total energy costs for electricity and gas was $191,450. In 2009, largely through conscious efforts and smarter use and planning of vehicles and buildings, the city reduced that cost to $173,320--a decrease of around 10%.

Moving forward, the plan has outlined some low hanging fruit that it will start picking off in an effort to keep these numbers going in the right direction.

The first real step in this direction aims squarely at replacing traditional lighting with energy efficient lighting in the City's buildings. A lighting audit of City Hall, the arena, the Miners' Hall and the City Works Yard was completed on May 12th. The contract to replace the lighting in the arena is currently out to tender as part of the overall arena improvement project helped along by the federal grant money initially targeted for the roof replacement. The roof replacement came in under budget, which has allowed additional arena improvements to also move forward.

Also targeted in the plan for improvement are the arena's boiler, City Hall's HVAC system, the City's street lights, and a steady replacement of fleet vehicles to more efficient options as their useful lifespans expire.

Although the purchase of carbon credits is necessary for the near future to meet provincial goals, there is now a plan in place to slowly reduce actual emissions and work towards a greener future for Rossland without breaking the bank. More information on the plan can be found on the city's website and in the council agenda package of June 14th.