THUNDER BAY — The City of Thunder Bay is searching for a consultant to help develop a community-wide plan to reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions.
Industrial operations and other big energy consumers will be a key focus of the study, but residents will not be excluded.
Although it's not clear yet how any plan would directly impact individual homeowners, one measure that may be investigated is using rebates to encourage more residents to adopt energy-conservation measures.
City Sustainability Coordinator Amy Coomes will act as the project lead.
The study, she said, "will take a look at emissions from all sources of energy including big industry, residential and transportation, and give kind of a map of where the users are, and figure out how we can work together as a community to reduce greenhouse gas."
Greenhouse gases contribute to climate change, Coomes said, and climate change requires Thunder Bay to adopt to the effects of larger and more frequent storms and flooding.
"The more we can mitigate the better. We're going to take a look at what we can do to collaborate more with all the big players in the city."
Coomes said consultations with residents are expected to paint a clearer picture of how energy is being used unnecessarily in homes.
"Whether it's through a lack of insulation or whether they don't have energy-efficient appliances...We can take a look at what other cities are doing with rebates and that sort of thing... Is there something the city can do, or hydro or Union Gas? What can we do together to help residents reduce their energy output?"
The city's Sustainability Plan for 2014-2020 established a greenhouse gas emissions reduction target of 20 per cent below 2009 levels by 2020.
The most recent statistics showed the city was falling well short of the goal.
According to Coomes, a 2016 community inventory found that overall city-wide GHG emissions had dropped by only six per cent.
The Corporation of the City of Thunder Bay had better success, achieving a 26 per cent decrease in GHG emissions from corporate activities and operations by 2018.
Corporate operations, though, account for only about two per cent of all of Thunder Bay's greenhouse gas emissions.
A new community inventory will be conducted as part of planning for the new energy plan.
The objective for reductions in the coming years is considerably more ambitious, however.
In its request for proposals from consultants, the city notes that its GHG emission reduction targets match those of the federal and Ontario governments, which are 37 per cent below 1990 levels by the year 2030.
"This Community Energy and GHG reduction plan will clearly definite the path forward, with tangible steps," the RFP states.
The study team will submit a report to city council by early 2021.
"We've got a year-and-a-half to do some stakeholder engagement, do some research, find out what others are doing, and get some ideas out into the community," Coomes said.
The project will be launched in the fall.
Funding to support the study comes from Ontario's Municipal Energy Plan and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.
