James Glave and Brendan Haley: The unheralded backbone of B.C.’s winning climate plan
Credit to Author: Hardip Johal| Date: Thu, 05 Dec 2019 14:00:03 +0000
As the province’s CleanBC strategy marks its first anniversary, a new report throws a spotlight on one of its largely unheralded ingredients.
Time flies when you are setting ambitious climate targets and legislating effective policies to meet them.
It was one year ago today that Premier John Horgan and Green party leader Andrew Weaver stood on a stage in downtown Vancouver to introduce an ambitious plan to cut greenhouse-gas emissions. The March budget then allocated close to a billion dollars, spread across three years, to implement it. The government then legislated a new 2030 carbon target and, more recently, a package of measures to hold itself accountable for the plan’s commitments.
It’s a marked departure from the “hand-waving” climate strategies that we’ve seen in the past — documents that were big on promises and pretty pictures, but without tough regulations to follow through on. Instead, CleanBC is 66 pages of bold action, with teeth.
The province intends to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 80 per cent by 2050, which matches the level of ambition that scientists say is needed to preserve a safe future. That’s a long way out, but since the task is huge the important thing is to start. That’s what the province is doing via a slew of new policies, regulations and actions, like mandating that 10 per cent of car sales be zero-emission vehicles by 2025, and increasing new building efficiency requirements starting in 2022, through the BC Energy Step Code.
Energy efficiency is a key pillar of CleanBC, but it doesn’t get much attention. Energy savings are less visible than wind turbines and hydroelectric plants, and governments accomplish them through a whole bucket of programs and rules requiring industry to up its game.
Energy efficiency will probably never shed its “boring” label, but it currently puts bread on the table for more people in Canada than the oil and gas and telecommunications sectors. The potential market is significant. According to the Vancouver Economic Commission, the changes brought in through the BC Energy Step Code and the City of Vancouver’s Zero Emissions Building Plan will together unleash a $3.3 billion market for high-efficiency construction technologies and products.
Two weeks ago, Efficiency Canada, a national think tank based at Carleton University, published its first provincial energy efficiency scorecard. British Columbia received the highest rank, largely due to policies like the BC Energy Step Code, increased natural gas savings targets and support for vehicle electrification.
And there’s more to be done. Here are two good reasons why energy efficiency can help the province advance its CleanBC agenda:
• First, the plan calls for “substantial additional volumes of electricity” starting around 2030 because of the aggressive electrification of transportation, heating and industry. Measures like deep energy retrofits of residential and commercial buildings and industrial energy management systems will service electricity demands at lower cost and with a smaller environmental footprint. If you wince at the prospect of protracted battles over proposed energy generation projects, remember that “boring” energy efficiency will help lessen the need for them to be built in the first place.
• Second, good policy rests on good data, and when it comes to buildings the government is currently flying blind. The province can, and should, require building owners to measure and report their energy use and emissions, and then label their buildings with an energy rating. While data-crunching isn’t exactly the stuff of viral memes, this work will yield more effective retrofit programs, more informed home buyers and a better-functioning real estate market.
Policymakers and those in the booming energy-efficiency industry should feel chuffed with B.C.’s top rank, but also emboldened to stay in the pole position with a range of additional actions. And British Columbians? They’ll continue reaping the benefits of good efficiency policies, such as healthier, quieter and more comfortable homes — plus more money in their pockets to spend on things other than gas and electricity.
James Glave is the principal of Glave Strategies, a Vancouver low-carbon economy consultancy, and Brendan Haley is policy director for Efficiency Canada, based at Carleton University in Ottawa.
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