Official Community Plan

C

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have about one-tenth the ecological footprint of a person who commutes by motor vehicle. Electric vehicles are also not within the financial means for many, and therefore are not an equitable transportation solution. The next strategic effort is to improve the efficiency of energy using systems. Examples of increasing efficiency include retrofitting existing buildings to be highly insulating and replacing aging municipal infrastructure, such as water and sewage pump stations, with the most efficient technologies available. The final step is to switch to low-carbon and renewable energy sources to supply the remaining energy demand. Examples include switching building heating systems from natural gas to heat pumps, or replacing a conventional vehicle with an electric vehicle. The sequence of the approach is important: by avoiding or reducing energy consumption (Avoid or Reduce), retrofit requirements (Improve) and the need to generate renewable energy (Switch) are both reduced. A co-benefit of this sequence of steps is that conservation of energy, construction materials, precious metals, water, and biodiversity are all enhanced.

community planning tools. These analyses are expected to become more common in evaluating community-wide climate action opportunities over time and offer an opportunity for Courtenay to continue to understand, account for, and take action on emissions in future OCP updates. In identifying larger GHG footprints than currently accounted for, these analyses likely will also identify that net-zero community wide emissions are harder to achieve as we account for more GHG sources in our daily lives. Similarly to the multiple R’s of waste management – Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Repurpose, Recycle – which encourages reducing waste at its source by first refusing it wherever possible, carbon pollution can most effectively be achieved by taking the following steps, in this order: • First, avoid or reduce energy demand as much as possible, • Second, improve energy efficiency, and • Third, switch energy supplies to low‑carbon sources. This approach prioritizes reducing energy demand as much as possible by avoiding energy intensive activities and technologies and adopting conservation measures. Examples of this include reducing the amount of waste that gets produced, and therefore must be recycled, composted or disposed of, or replacing a single-occupancy vehicular trip with carpooling, walking, cycling, or transit. The benefit of avoiding energy use in these cases applies even if widespread municipal composting and recycling measures are available, or if all vehicles are electric. This is because moving and treating all types of waste takes energy and effort, and the creation of electric vehicles is highly energy and material intensive. For example, it’s estimated that active transportation commuters

PART C Thematic Policies