Emissions and action on climate change is heading in the right direction, but it’s slow going.
In the second annual update on the progress of HalifACT, Halifax climate action plan that was approved in 2020, city staff showed that 30 per cent of projects are well underway.
When it comes to emissions, targets are getting further away.
At the Environment and Sustainability Committee meeting on Thursday, Simone Charron, HRM climate change specialist, said the municipality’s goal is to be net-zero by 2030.
“This means we need to decarbonize our buildings, our fleet and our lighting as a municipality,” she said.
There’s still a long way to go but working towards electrifying their fleet and retrofitting buildings among other projects, the municipal government’s emissions are down 20 per cent from the 2016 baseline.
As for the community emissions as a whole, the target is to reach 75 per cent below 2016 numbers by 2030. But in 2021, community emissions were down only seven per cent (from the 2016 baseline).
“We’ve been trending gradually downwards, but it’s been at a relatively slow rate,” Charron told the committee.
Progress on projects
There are 46 projects outlined in HalifACT and 37 of those are underway. In the past year, Charron said 11 are classified as green or well underway, 19 are yellow, meaning some progress, and five are red where minimal progress has been made.
Green
Some HalifACT projects well underway include: The HRM electric vehicle policy, a study to analyse emissions from solid waste, deep energy retrofits on municipal buildings and the agreement to buy 60 electric transit buses.
Yellow
Some of the projects that are making some progress include: Pilot projects to test stormwater management, a natural asset inventory for HRM, work on flood hazard mapping, a pilot project that would distribute storm kits to newcomers through the libraries and integrating a climate lens into financial processes.
Red
Some of the projects showing very little progress include: identifying critical infrastructure and systems that are at risk of climate impacts, integrating climate into emergency management response and implementing a region-wide tree-planting program on public and private land.
Charron said the slow progress on the red projects is mostly because the funding isn’t flowing fully yet, the projects have been under-resourced, and they require a lot of collaboration. She said she expects there will be a lot more movement on these in the coming year.
Last year, 20 per cent of HalifACT actions were classified as on track, and this year, 30 per cent of actions are on track.
Questions about the climate action tax
Coun. Cathy Deagle Gammon (Waverley – Fall River – Musquodoboit Valley) says not a week goes by that she doesn’t hear from a resident asking about the climate action tax.
The climate action tax, at three per cent, was approved in April to support HalifACT.
“In the last couple of weeks or so, residents got their tax bill, they were looking at this three per cent that’s for HalifACT, and they’re (asking) where is it going and where is the transparency?”
It’s complicated because it’s spent across several areas, said Shannon Miedema, director of environment and climate change. The money from the climate action tax will go into a reserve to fund the first four years of capital projects in the plan.
Miedema said HRM is well-positioned to meet the net-zero target by 2030 on the corporate side because it’s under their direct control and because they have some options for offsetting. It’s the community targets that are more difficult to achieve because that involves many more pieces like utilities, she said.
“I’m confident that we have been really gaining momentum and we’re really starting to see people step up across all sectors,” Miedema said. “I am worried about our economic situation and what it’s going to mean: Do we need to slow down? Can we keep going as quickly as we need to?”
Staff point out the largest financial pressures are increases in energy costs, “high and increasing compensation increases from collective agreements,” softening revenues from deed transfer taxes and other factors.
