Orillia ranks among the world’s leading cities for its efforts in climate change mitigation and adaptation.
The city received an A- score, the second highest score possible, following its first report to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) – a global reporting framework that tracks climate action across over 1,200 municipalities, companies, states, and regions around the world.
The global average for climate mitigation and adaptation scores is C and B, respectively, and only seven Canadian cities – Toronto, Halifax, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Montreal, and Windsor – received a perfect score of A through the project this year, along with 119 cities around the world.
“It really emphasizes our position as a global leader in climate change action, which I think the whole community needs to celebrate because they were all part of it,” said Renee Recoskie, the city’s director of facilities, climate change, and operations.
“This score provides validation for the planning work that has been completed to put Orillia on a path to reach its emission reduction goals and enhance the community's resiliency to climate impacts.”
For a city to receive a score in the A’s, it needs to demonstrate best practices with regard to climate adaptation and mitigation, and have set ambitious targets that it is actively working towards.
For Orillia, that includes an array of initiatives set out in its climate change action plan and climate change adaptation strategy, which spells out goals to both reduce the city’s effects on climate change and adapt to changes as they come.
“Because Orillia took such a detailed approach in creating its climate change action plan and creating its climate change adaptation strategy story, the city is now equipped with a clear and complete pathway to reach its climate targets,” Recoskie said.
Moving forward, some of the specific actions the city is taking include a detailed community energy efficiency financing feasibility study, which is nearing completion, and will help the city identify opportunities “to implement a local financing program targeting deep energy retrofits for Orillia residents,” Recoskie said.
“One of the pieces we're really exploring is around what's known as an energy concierge service … to ensure people have the support they need to walk them through what they should be doing in their homes and what retrofits might be possible,” she said. “Heat pumps is a very popular one … but there's all kinds of ways.”
Recoskie said the city has completed a variety of greenhouse gas energy audits across its corporate facilities, with a number of retrofit projects set for consideration through next year’s budget process.
Longer term, the city’s actions are meant to work toward its targets of reducing the community’s emissions by 33 per cent by 2030, and to achieve net zero emissions by 2050.
“But on the corporation side, the city is trying to lead by example and really reach that net zero target by 2040, which is a very ambitious target that we're actively working towards,” Recoskie said.
“We're really not only trying to reduce our greenhouse gas impact now, through our adaptation strategy, we're also trying to make sure that the city is well equipped to deal with (a) changing climate.”
