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Carbon-Negative Backyard Housing Energy Transition Strategy 2021 Events Webinars

July 14 Webinar – Carbon Negative, Net-Zero Backyard Houses – A Made-in-Edmonton Climate Solution

Backyard House Rendering

Over 90% of Edmonton’s greenhouse gas emissions come from three big sources: buildings, energy sources, and transportation. Backyard houses, (or, “garage suites”) have the potential to help solve all three problems at once! 

Edmonton-based architect Eugene Dening and builder William Keith have designed and built an innovative backyard house that is a step closer to the holy grail: the carbon-negative, net-zero backyard house. Attend this webinar to learn more about this type of house, how it can be a powerful climate solution, and the innovations that Eugene and Keith have implemented in this project.

This free webinar is happening on July 14, 2021, at 7pm.

Register here!

Categories
Events Private Urban Forest trees Webinars

July 6 – Join Us To Discuss The Private Urban Forest

Tomorrow Foundation Tree Count
Join us for our Summer 2021 Community Science Project!

Sign up on Eventbrite for our launch on Tuesday July 6 at 7:30 pm!

Project Description

Have you ever pondered how the trees on your property benefit you?

Or what kind of trees are growing on your property?

Have you ever considered how much of our urban forest resides on private property?

We at Tomorrow Foundation are asking these questions, and more!

This summer we are piloting a project in the Queen Alexandra Neighbourhood where we want to gather information about the trees in your yard! This project has the potential to grow into other neighbourhoods in the coming years.

Why is it important to gather this information?

A growing city impacts the trees of our public land (public urban forest) and private land (private urban forest.) By gathering a baseline of information now, we can better understand how these changes will affect us in the future!

The City of Edmonton has a goal to plant 2 million trees to help combat climate change. Getting information about private trees will allow us to advise the city as to the best places to plant them!

Much of our urban forest is on private property. In order to create accurate assessments to meet Edmontons climate goals we need to know what we have!

We need you!

Here are ways you can help make our project a success!

  1. If you are in the Queen Alexandra Neighbourhood please give us permission to enter your property so we can measure your trees.
  2. You can measure your own trees and send us the information.
  3. Join our volunteer team and help us measure!

Contact us at [email protected]

What information are we gathering and why?

In order to get accurate results we are collecting this information.

  1. Tree species – Each species uniquely interacts with its environment.
  2. Circumference of the trunk and Height of tree – A sign of age and overall vigour.
  3. Dead branches – A sign of the tree’s health.
  4. Exposure to sunlight – A sign of the growing conditions of the tree.
  5. Distance to the house – An indicator of potential home energy savings.

Benefits to you

  1. You can get a personalized report about what services the trees provide for you (e.g. energy savings, reduction of air pollution)
  2. This data will be added to a larger report about the Queen Alexandra neighbourhood
  3. You could gain a free sapling!

Can I opt out?

Of course! This is volunteer only.…

Categories
Energy Transition Strategy 2021 Events Green Transportation Webinars

June 22 Webinar – A Vision for Spoke-tactular Bike Share

bike rider on bike share bike

A free, public talk about implementing a public bike share system in Edmonton

University of Alberta School of Urban and Regional Planning Students will present research on best practices for bike share systems and discuss their findings for implementing a public bike share system in Edmonton. This is based on a studio project guided by Paths for People and the Tomorrow Foundation.

Tuesday, June 22

7-8pm

Zoom

It’s free.

Register Here.

 

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Categories
Energy Transition Strategy 2021

Edmonton’s Big Climate Plan – Act Now

19 months after council declared a climate emergency, admin is putting forth the final version of Edmonton’s climate action plan. They’re doing it the day after tomorrow! (Yes, I’m late on this.)

The Plan

The plan is called the Revised Community Energy Transition Strategy (it’s here, all 175 pages of it). And here’s the thing: it’s good. It’s really good.

  • It organizes our opportunities to reduce CO2 into four big “pathways”:
    1. Renewable and Resilient Energy Transition (greening our electricity and heating)
    2. Emissions Neutral Buildings (insulation and good windows)
    3. Low Carbon City and Transportation (dense urban form, reducing car trips and increasing bike/walk/transit trips)
    4. Carbon Capture and Nature Based Solutions

The strategy takes a clear-eyed gaze into the challenges and opportunities that we face, and proposes real solutions. Here are some thoughts:

    • The way that our municipalities are set up in Canada, cities have the least amount of money (they receive only about 8% of every tax dollar).
    • Therefore, we will need dollars from the provincial and federal governments to move the plan along.
    • Our biggest lever, then, is #3 above: Low Carbon City and Transportation. That’s because Edmonton has a large degree of control over zoning and the allocation of our street space.
    • For more details, I tweeted about the plan last Sunday.

Help Us Take Action

So, this plan goes to council on Monday. You can make a difference in two ways:

  1. Email your councillor. (see below)
  2. Speak to council on Monday, April 12. (virtually)
    • The report will go to Executive Committee at 9:30am. Unfortunately, you can’t know exactly when you’ll be called upon. However, if you are registered and aren’t available when your turn comes up, there’s no downside (so if you can, you should try and speak!).
    • Presentations to council are very powerful. This is your most impactful action.
    • To register to speak, email [email protected] or (better) call them on Monday morning (780-496-8178). They are very accommodating, and they will give you instructions on addressing council.

Emailing Your Councillor (type your postal code below and add your own personal message)

Categories
Energy Transition Strategy 2021

Daily Car Trips in Edmonton Have Peaked (if We’re Serious About Climate Change)

traffic jam

Transportation is responsible for about one third of greenhouse gas emissions in Edmonton¹. 78% of trips are taken in SUVs (and cars)². And Edmonton needs to reduce its transportation emissions by about 90% to reach its goals. The city has two main strategies:

  • Strategy #1: Increase the number of bus/bike/walk trips from about 22% to 50% of all trips by 2040³
  • Strategy #2: Convert the other 50% of trips to electric cars, powered by a green electricity grid (the City doesn’t mention a timeline).

50% of trips by bus/bike/walk, the other 50% by electric car. The concept is simple, and we have all the tools, but as any city watcher will tell you, the politics around transportation in Edmonton are…complicated.

How big is the challenge of making 50% of trips climate-friendly in the next 19 years? 

  • Edmonton residents made 2.45 million SUV/car trips per weekday in 2015 (source
  • We made another roughly 700,000 walk/bike/transit trips per weekday. 
  • To achieve our climate goals:
    • SUV/car trips need to remain the same from now on. They’ve peaked!
    • All of the new growth in weekday trips, about 1.6 million new trips, needs to be in walk, bike, or transit trips (). 

If we want to meet our climate goals, this transformation of how we move around has to happen in the next 19 years. Questions abound. How do we make non-car modes more desirable? And what about the other side of the coin, dare we make car trips ever so slightly less desirable? If future posts, we will explore both questions. And we’ll talk about electric cars too. They can help, but maybe not as much as we think.

References

  1. Revising Edmonton’s Community Energy Transition Strategy, November 2020, page 9
  2. 2015 Edmonton and Region Household Travel Survey – released April 2018, page 31
  3. Revising Edmonton’s Community Energy Transition Strategy, November 2020
Categories
#Yes2ClimateYEG Energy Transition Strategy 2021

Edmonton Needs to Cut Emissions by 12% per year until 2030

If we are to meet our climate obligations, it’s going to take a big effort. What exactly is the scale of the problem? Here are some numbers:

  • Edmonton’s emissions in 2019 were 17 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent, that’s 46,575 tonnes per day (more data here).
  • Our goal is to reduce that to roughly 5.4 million tonnes by 2030, nine short years from now.
  • So, we need to cut our greenhouse gas emissions by 12% each and every year for the next nine years.

In what areas can we reduce our emissions?

YEG GHGs Profile

The above figure represents where Edmonton could take effective climate action (as reported by the city here). If we fully greened our energy system (where we get our heat and electricity), that would solve 36% of the problem. Transportation is next at 28%, then buildings at 19%. We’ll worry about the last category at a later time.

Edmonton needs to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions 12% every year until 2030. Our focus areas should be transportation, buildings, and our heat and electricity. At a very high level, it would look something like this:

  1. Transportation: rapidly convert all cars and SUVs to electric, while more than doubling the share of transit, walk and bike trips.
  2. Buildings: Perform as many Deep Energy Retrofits on houses and buildings as possible, as fast as possible. We need to be retrofitting 10,000+ houses every year.
  3. Energy Systems: rapid and deep decarbonization to our electricity and heating systems. This means solar and wind, integration with BC’s electricity grid (they have lots of hydro), geothermal, biomass energy, and anything else we can think of.

Some of the changes need to be driven at the provincial and federal levels, working in tandem. However, Edmonton has many actions that it can take, starting right now, that will bring us closer to our goals. Over the next posts, we will take a closer look at each of the areas above, transportation, buildings, and energy systems, and examine what Edmonton can do, and when, to respond to the climate emergency.

Our first stop: Transportation.

Categories
Energy Transition Strategy 2021

The State of Climate Action, Edmonton, Alberta. Early 2021.

smokestack

(Flickr/ Nick Humphries)In 2018, the IPCC declared that the world has a remaining carbon budget of 420 billion tonnes for us to have a 67% chance of keeping global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius. It was a desperate last call by the world’s scientific community, and thankfully it provoked a reaction. 2019 was the most important year of climate action that the world has ever known, as people around the world rose up to demand that we meet the difficult yet achievable goals. Edmonton declared a climate emergency in 2019, and started developing an ambitious plan to stay withing its climate targets. So where are we at?

In short, we’re in a tight spot. Edmonton can still, just barely, live within our carbon budget.  Furthermore, we can do it while still maintaining our high quality of life. In fact, we can increase equity, biodiversity, clean air and clean water at the same time. Every tonne of CO2 that we avoid emitting is a victory, and we can make our communities stronger while we are at it.

Edmonton has taken some good steps towards our goals, but more needs to be done, and faster.

Edmonton’s Climate Moves, 2018 – 2020

Here’s a recap of what Edmonton has done on the climate change file:

  • 2018
    • Edmonton signs the Edmonton Declaration, a relatively obscure pledge signed by North American mayors. It commits Edmonton to take action in line with a 1.5 degree worldwide temperature increase.
    • Edmonton orders 40 electric buses.
  • 2019
    • Edmonton declares a climate emergency.
    • Edmonton releases “Getting To 1.5°C“, a high-level but realistic and solutions-oriented planning document. It outlines our remaining (as of January, 2019) carbon budget of 155,000,000 tonnes (155 Mtonnes). Without drastic change, we will exceed that budget in 2027 or so.
  •  2020
    • Edmonton city council cancels the very popular (to its 700 participants) and very hated (by wedge-issue councillors) $55,000/year e-bike rebate program.
    • Edmonton releases another climate change report. This one is somehow more vague than the one from 2019 after a year of work (?).
    • Edmonton eliminates parking minimums and adopts the City Plan, two progressive, climate-friendly moves that illustrate that climate change is an “everything, everywhere” kind of issue, and that there are many solutions to this deep, complex problem.

The above is not exhaustive, but it gives a quick overview of where we are. Although we’ve made some good moves, our official climate plan is pretty stalled out. Council took none of the “accelerated actions” put forth by administration in November of 2020. As we enter 2021, the climate change file is in need of some urgency and innovative thinking by the City of Edmonton. And this year is an election year, a time when administration goes into “risk hibernation”, avoiding anything out of the ordinary out of fear of the upcoming change in leadership.

This is the first post of a series that will outline what climate action Edmonton has promised, and what actions it needs to take, and when, to live up to its promises.

We are in a climate emergency, and we need action now. But first, what’s the scale of the problem, and in what areas can take the most effective climate actions? We’ll talk about that in our next post.

Categories
#Yes2ClimateYEG

Submission to Executive Committee, Energy Transition Strategy

Councillors Cartmell, Hamilton, McKeen, and Walters, and Mayor Iveson,

Subject: Item 6.14, November 9, 2020 Executive Committee Meeting

Thank you for accepting this submission as you consider Edmonton’s response to the worldwide climate crisis. Tomorrow Foundation for a Sustainable Future is a charitable environmental organization with deep roots and a 50-year history in Edmonton. We have recently begun organizing the 75% of Edmontonians who are concerned about climate change and are motivated to build a better future for our city through bold, impactful action.

In October, we launched the #Yes2ClimateYEG campaign asking Edmontonians to weigh in on how taking climate action is good for them, good for their lifestyle and good for their livelihood. We will share a campaign report update during December’s budget deliberations. 

With only a few days between administration’s release of the Energy Transition update and this submission, these are the most pressing comments we urge you to consider: 

  • Time is of the essence. Our carbon budget is rapidly shrinking. Since the signing of the Edmonton Declaration in 2018, which committed Edmonton to a carbon budget of 155,000,000 tonnes of CO2 from 2019 onwards, Edmonton has released approximately 32,000,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent, 21% of our budget.
  • This council has a mandate to act as we reimagine recovery from COVID and building back better. Decisive, specific, accountable and funded action cannot wait for the next council, or we miss the opportunity before us.
  • Please fund all of the “Proposed Accelerated Actions” put forth by administration and expedite those with the potential to target systemic inequality (CR_7576 Attachment 1_ Energy Transition Strategy Accelerated Actions.pdf).
    • Bike infrastructure and tree planting could be particularly good parts of an equity strategy, and they should be funded and directed to specific and underserved areas of the city.
  • Administration’s Carbon Accounting Framework initiative is crucial but not ambitious enough in its timeframes. (page 26, “Revising Edmonton’s Community Energy Transition Strategy”). 
    • An initial funding for carbon accounting should be included in this year’s budget deliberations for post COVID recovery in 2021-2023.
    • The rollout timeline should be cut from two years to one year. A pilot Carbon Accounting Framework must be ready for implementation in Fall 2021. Similar to retirement or education savings, starting early in small amounts is less noticeable to a household’s bottom line than having to catch up on savings in a short period of time later. We need a carbon accounting tool implemented immediately to ensure all decisions are held accountable to the carbon budget’s bottom line.
  • Council should direct administration to create a list of inexpensive and/or money-saving accelerated actions for release in early 2021 alongside the final revised Community Energy Transition Strategy. Examples on this list could include:
    • Enable separate titles for net-zero garden suites by June 2021. This would stimulate the economy, increase a climate-friendly housing type, increase the supply of more affordable housing, accelerate progress towards our density targets, and increase the tax base.
    • Reimagine Saskatchewan Drive – Re-allocating a car lane to a multi-use path as suggested by Paths for People would save money on the Duggan Bridge renewal and increase bike and walk trips (thereby reducing CO2 emissions).
    • Dedicated Bus Lanes for the April 2021 Bus Network Redevelopment – A reallocation of space on 2-3 priority bus routes would significantly increase ridership for a relatively minor investment.

There has never been more support for or awareness of the need for climate action in Edmonton. We urge you to show courage in moving our city boldly forward as part of the solution to our era’s most urgent crisis.

Sincerely,

Conrad Nobert

President, Tomorrow Foundation for a Sustainable Future

Categories
#Yes2ClimateYEG

Media Release: #Yes2ClimateYEG Campaign Launch

MEDIA RELEASE: 

#Yes2ClimateYEG – Edmonton charity launches campaign to support a low carbon future and healthy environment

Release date: October 16, 2020 at 9:00 am

The 50-year old environmental charity, Tomorrow Foundation for a Sustainable Future, is launching the #Yes2ClimateYEG campaign to support a low carbon future and healthy environment. “With the anticipated release of the updated Community Energy Transition Strategy from the City of Edmonton, now is the perfect time to mobilize residents around today’s climate reality,” says Julie Kusiek, Executive Director of the Tomorrow Foundation. 

Edmontonians have a vision for a climate-friendly future. Tomorrow Foundation wants to know what climate action(s) will make a positive impact in your personal, community or professional life. How do you envision a low-carbon Edmonton positively impacting you? For example, investment in zero emissions transportation might mean a high quality active transportation route to school or work for you or your kids, or green building standards might lead to lower energy costs and more certainty for your business. Starting today, Edmontonians are invited to share their stories at https://tomorrowfoundation.ca/yes2climateyeg/.  

The purpose of this campaign is to gather and amplify support from a variety of individuals, businesses and community organizations for climate action at a municipal level. “Through the eyes of the individual, we can deepen our understanding of climate change and translate what is often positioned as a burden into that of an opportunity,” says Mike Mellross, Program Director of the Climate Innovation Fund at Alberta EcoTrust, “A personal journey can surface the failures of our systems and provide a northstar to effective, just and equitable solutions. I encourage residents of Edmonton to take part in this campaign and assist in building a climate positive future.” 

Stories will be shared over social media, using the hashtag #Yes2ClimateYEG and presented in a final report to Edmonton City Council on October 26. Edmontonians wishing to keep informed on campaign updates or take additional actions can sign up by emailing [email protected] or going to the campaign website.

You can find out more about Tomorrow Foundation for a Sustainable Future at www.tomorrowfoundation.ca.

Media inquiries can be sent to Julie Kusiek by emailing [email protected] or contacting @tomorrowfdn on Twitter. 

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#Yes2ClimateYEG Events

#Yes2ClimateYEG

Join the movement.

Tomorrow Foundation supports a low-carbon, sustainable, healthy Edmonton.

Climate Action in Edmonton:

  • is healthy – climate-friendly cities have cleaner air, healthier food, and safe, active ways to get around
  • diversifies the economy – Edmonton competes on a worldwide stage because we recognize that energy transition is happening and our workforce is prepared for it
  • spurs innovation and community – climate change is the challenge of our lifetimes, and we can come together as a community to spur innovation and create a more connected community
  • increases resiliency – renewable energy and energy efficiency reduce utility costs, making our households stronger and more able to withstand the winds of a changing future
  • should be inclusive and diverse – Edmonton’s climate action should include traditionally-underrepresented persons, with an emphasis on Indigenous voices


We’re launching the #Yes2ClimateYEG campaign to help gather momentum for this vision, and we’re looking to hear from you!

Tell us how decisive climate action by Edmonton City Council can make a positive impact on your own life. Some ideas:

  • Will cleaner air make your family healthier?
  • What if there was a protected bike lane connecting your block to the grocery store? Would your family live a more active life?
  • What if your electricity and heating costs were cut in half?
  • Trees and community gardens contribute to a climate-friendly Edmonton. How could more access to these change your life for the better?

Submit your story here.

Other actions:

  1. Spread the word with hashtag #Yes2ClimateYEG.
  2. Speak to Edmonton City Council Executive Committee on Monday, November 9, 2020.
    • If you’ve never presented at Council Committee before, no problem. We can help show you the ropes.
    • We need lots of speakers to help amplify the story messages coming in. Email us at [email protected].

Thank you for helping Edmonton City Council vote #Yes2ClimateYEG.

Read the press release here.

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