Climate groups optimistic about Waterloo region’s path forward to reduce greenhouse gas emissions

Local efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the fight against climate change appear to be working.

The ClimateActionWR progress report shows emissions are trending downward, even beating the agreed target.

“We are capable of making transformational change, if we feel it’s important. So that actually gives me a lot of hope, a little silver lining,” said Tova Davidson, executive director of Sustainable Waterloo Region.

A new report shows the goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 6 per cent from 2010 to 2020 in Region of Waterloo was achieved, and then some. The ClimateActionWR report shows a total emissions decrease of 14.4 per cent.

“While we did experience an upward trajectory of emissions since 2015, we’re encouraged to see that our community’s emissions are not growing at the same rate as population,” said Kyra Chisholm, ClimateActionWR plan manager, in a presentation to council on Apr. 4.

Davidson sees it as a win but cautions much of the success in reduced emissions belongs to extraordinary pandemic disruptions.

“When we all stopped driving to work and stopped going to see people and stopped flying places, our emissions from transportation came down,” said Davidson.

Officials add transportation remains the region’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, making up as much as 50 per cent of CO2 emissions – one of the key culprits driving climate change.

“Since 2010, transportation emissions remain the largest contributor of emissions and continue to increase despite gains in fuel efficiency, so it’s essential the way we change, the way we move both goods and people within the region,” explained Chisholm.

Davidson said in order to reach the region’s broader goal of a 50 per cent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2030, below its 2010 levels, more work is needed. Zero-carbon buildings, like evolv1 in Waterloo, are examples of some of the next steps needed to curb warming and head off the worst effects of climate change.

“You know, a lot of people talk about: ‘Are we going to electrify everything?’ That’s all very, very important but we need to reduce the amount of energy we are using in the first place,” Davidson said. “As people begin to wake up to the need for this, and the benefits it could bring to us and the intersection between a lot of other social issues, that we actually start to pay more attention and that attention, that will to change is really the magic.”

The Region of Waterloo has also committed to an 80 per cent reduction in community greenhouse gas emissions below 2010 levels by 2050.