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'Aggressive' game plan touted to tackle climate change emergency

BRIAN CROSS Updated: February 12, 2020 - Windsor Star

The lowest-hanging fruit when it comes to solving Windsor’s recently declared climate change emergency is our woefully inefficient homes, which use 35 per cent more energy than the Ontario average.

So creating a Residential Deep Energy Efficiency Retrofit program aimed at retrofitting 80 per cent of Windsor’s older-than-average housing stock by 2041 is at the top of a list of seven strategies that would reduce reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 540,000 tonnes of CO2 annually. That works out to 71 per cent of the city council-approved target of a 760,000-tonne target. A report on accelerating Windsor’s climate change actions going to next Wednesday’s Environment, Transportation and Public Safety Standing Committee also includes additional recommendations to get to 100 per cent.

“It is going to be challenging, transformative, ambitious,” Karina Richters, the city’s supervisor of environmental sustainability and climate change, said of reaching the goal. She prepared the report in response to council’s Nov. 18 emergency declaration, which called for a plan within 90 days to accelerate the existing Community Energy Plan. Richters said she hopes the report paints a clear picture for council on what needs to be done.

“Yeah, it’s going to be aggressive,” she said of the recommended measures, which will cost $1.3 million to get to the next steps. “Can we reach it? That’s going to come back to the community buy-in. They (the public) need to understand the importance of it.”

The city is aiming to reduce its 2014 emission baseline by 40 per cent by 2041. And the reality is they are still rising, said Derek Coronado, executive director of the Citizens Environment Alliance. So the biggest key is getting started with mitigation to apply the brakes and start declining.

“Overall I think that the report hit all the important issues and it recognized the city is not doing enough, and it recognized that there are gaps in actions that the city is going to have to deal with going forwards,” he said. “But first things first, is that the city has to engage in the actual actions to start bending the curve down and start really eating into our emissions and getting us on the path where we want to go.”

The DEER retrofit program would reduce the city’s emissions by 235,000 tonnes if its 80 per cent goal is achieved. A DEER program for institutional and commercial buildings could reduce emissions by another 70,000 tonnes. An administrative report says that improving residential efficiency is “critical” to achieving the emission goals because Windsor has one of the oldest (and least efficient) building stocks in the province. The average age of houses in Windsor is 1955, while the Ontario average is 1974.

Despite decades of government programs encouraging people to add insulation, door and windows and energy-efficient furnaces to improve efficiency, the uptake in Windsor has been unimpressive. Richters said surveys show that some people don’t participate for two main reasons: the cost and the fact they may move out of their homes before the energy savings pay off. DEER addresses that with a business plan for bulk buying and contracting that would reduce costs by 33 per cent, financing the program possibly with green bonds, and having residents pay off their debts gradually on their taxes, so if they move the new owner would shoulder the remaining debt.

“Now you have access to capital and you don’t have to worry about the return on investment,” Richter said.

Another action is to reduce emissions by 65,000 tonnes is to have 10 per cent of all heating and cooling demands met by district energy systems, which involve having centralized units delivering heating and cooling through underground pipes to numerous buildings. Replacing heaters and air conditioners in individual buildings with district energy increases efficiency by 65 per cent and has already been proven successful with the District Energy System operating downtown. Richters said district energy might be feasible in industrial areas. A bonus is they are easily adaptable when a new efficient fuel or technology becomes available.

“It makes it more future ready to do those innovative changes in the future,” she said.

Two recently approved plans to dramatically upgrade the Windsor Transit System and encourage walking and cycling (the Active Transportation Master Plan), would get people out of their cars and thereby reduce emissions by a total of 60,000 tonnes. A goal to have electric vehicles make up 10 per cent of all light-duty cars and trucks by 2041 would reduce emissions by 40,000 tonnes.

Another emission reducer is anaerobic digestion, a technology used to convert organic matter into renewable natural gas. Windsor has to start collecting compostable materials at curbside starting in 2025. So the plan is to use this waste along with wastewater sludge and other materials for conversion into renewable natural gas. By replacing non-renewable natural gas with renewable, the city would offset 70,000 tonnes of CO2 annually.

While succeeding with all these actions would leave a 29 per cent gap, Richters said there are realistic ways to get to 100 per cent of the emission-reduction goal. Increasing the participation rate in district energy systems from 10 per cent to 30 per cent would cut another 130,000 tonnes. A goal by natural gas supplier Enbridge to have 10 per cent renewable natural gas by 2050 would reduce local emissions by 105,750 tonnes. And there could be a bigger uptake on electric vehicles by 2041, according to Richters. If utilization went from 10 per cent to 30 per cent, 80,000 fewer tonnes would be emitted.