Corporate and Community Climate Action Plans

The City has recently updated our Corporate and Community Climate Action Plans. The Climate Action Plans will shape the City’s efforts to reduce the impacts of climate change over the next decade and beyond.

Community Climate Action Plan

Corporate Climate Action Plan 

Corporate and Community Climate Action Plans

Addressing climate change is one of the most critical issues of our time – both locally and across the planet. Changes to our climate are already noticeable with more frequent extreme weather events (droughts, floods, heat waves, fires), and these changes are projected to increase over the coming decades. Global climate models project temperature to increase over the century. Locally, this is projected to result in more extreme heat days, longer dry spells in summer, more precipitation in spring, fall and winter, warmer winters, and more intense extreme weather events. Urgent and comprehensive action is needed in order to limit the impacts of climate change. 

Communities across BC are making significant commitments to reduce GHG emissions from their operations, and to support the transition toward net-zero emissions across their communities. Despite the significant investments required, the transition towards more efficient technology is expected to reduce energy costs for the City, residents and businesses significantly. The cost of initiatives aimed at reducing our greenhouse gas emissions are also significantly less expensive than responding to extreme weather events and other natural disasters attributed to climate change.   

The City updated its Corporate and Community Climate Action Plans in August 2022. Initiatives have been developed to achieve the provincial and federal government’s emissions reduction targets of 30 - 45% by 2030 and 100% by 2050, relative to 2007 levels. The proposed initiatives address the inter-related issues of air quality and climate change. The two separate plans are as follows:

Community Climate Action Plan – outlines activities associated with transportation, buildings, solid waste, and agriculture.

• Increasing transit, cycling, and walking
• Encouraging energy efficiency upgrades and heat pump adoption
• Facilitating uptake of electric vehicles
• Restoring and protecting natural areas
• Increasing waste diversion from the landfill

Corporate Climate Action Plan – outlines activities specific to the City’s buildings, fleets, utilities, and lighting.

• Electric vehicle fleet
• Energy efficiency upgrades at City facilities
• New buildings have net zero carbon emissions
• Sewage treatment plant biogas generation

For those looking for more details about the Corporate and Community Climate Action Plans, please read on!

Community Climate Action Plan:

Across the community, core activities undertaken by residents, businesses and organizations that result in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions include: heating and cooling buildings, heating hot water, transporting people and goods, and disposing of compostable waste in the landfill (such as food scraps, paper, wood).

In addition to the core sources of community GHG emissions, other sources that occur within community boundaries include agriculture (including emissions from animals, fertilizer and pesticide application, and agricultural burning), non-road equipment and engines (including farm vehicles, other heavy-duty equipment used at commercial and industrial sites, and small equipment such as lawnmowers), rail and aircraft. These sources are primarily regulated and managed by provincial and federal governments, but as part of the Climate Action Plan process, the City will be exploring ways to facilitate GHG reductions from agriculture.

Transportation is a large part of the Community Action Plan, with an emphasis on improving our mode share. Mode share refers to the ways in which we travel throughout our community, this includes driving, carpooling, public transit, and walking/biking. The City of Chilliwack is aiming to achieve a 3 – 10% increase in transit mode share by 2050, as well as a 6 – 15% increase in densification and pedestrian mode share between by 2050.

Buildings are another large source of GHG emissions, produced through the heating and cooling of air and water. The City of Chilliwack is aiming to accelerate the use of heat pumps by 40-100% by 2030 – 2050, and encourage energy efficiency upgrades in existing buildings. These initiatives will complement existing rebates offered by utility companies and the provincial and federal governments.

In addition, the Community Climate Action Plan contains the following actions:

- Accelerate EV or electric vehicle adoption as well as ZEV, zero emission vehicle adoption by 40 – 50% by 2030.
- Work with the building industry to build capacity to accelerate the energy efficiency requirements for new buildings (e.g. Adopt the BC Energy Step Code to reduce GHG emissions faster).
- Reclaim and restore natural areas.
- Divert 95% of compostable waste by 2040.
- Increase efficiency of landfill gas capture by 10 – 15% by 2030.

Corporate Climate Action Plan:

The City of Chilliwack is responsible for delivering services to residents, including emergency services (fire, police, emergency preparedness), waste management (garbage, recycling, compostable waste), development planning and approval, recreation, parks and trails management, maintenance of roads and sidewalks, and many more. Delivery of these services currently results in greenhouse gas emissions from fleet vehicles, and from operating facilities and infrastructure. In 2020, City operations resulted in approximately 5,560 tonnes CO₂e emissions, where the largest sources were vehicle fleet (31%) and recreation operations (27%). This equates to approximately 1.3% of the community GHG emissions.

The Corporate Climate Action Plan contains actions such as:

- 100% electric light-duty fleet by 2030 - 2040.
- 100% zero emission heavy duty fleet phase in by 2030 – 2050.
- Accelerating facility retrofits, including conversion to heat pumps.
- New buildings have net-zero carbon emissions.
- Sewage treatment plant uses biogas.

How were the plans developed?

With the assistance of a consultant, the initiatives in the Corporate and Community Climate Action Plans were developed through an extensive consultation process that involved staff, stakeholders, and the public. Two staff workshops were held, as well as numerous discussions with key project managers. A project page on the City’s online consultation platform, Engage Chilliwack, was created that hosted a survey, ideas board, and the ability to ask staff questions. Public and stakeholder consultation occurred in the spring of 2022, following development of the targets and plan initiatives with staff. Overall, consultation found that there is a high level of concern amongst the public about climate change, with over 70% of survey respondents extremely or moderately concerned about climate change, and more than 60% indicating support for additional property taxes to fund the plan.

To learn more about the engagement process that lead to the development of the climate action plans, read our Engagement Summary Report.