The Mayor of Victoria has asked the City of Parksville to show support for lowering greenhouse gas emissions.
Parksville city council voted in favour on Wednesday, April 7, to receive a letter from the Mayor of Victoria, Lisa Helps. The letter, dated March 10, requested that B.C. municipalities show their endorsement of the Help Cities Lead Campaign and to communicate such to the provincial government.
According to the campaign website, Help Cities Lead is an education and awareness campaign that works to build support for more focused collaboration between the province of B.C. and local governments on building climate policy.
“Emissions from buildings account for about 11 per cent of the province’s GHG (Greenhouse gas) emissions,” wrote Helps. “This is the third highest source of GHG emissions in B.C., after road transportation (at 27.1 per cent) and the oil and gas sector (at 17.6 per cent). For municipalities, GHG emissions from existing buildings account for 40 – 60 per cent of community emissions.”
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Helps continues to state that several local governments, including Victoria, are keen to set their own targets to significantly reduce GHG emissions from buildings over the next 10 years in alignment with climate emergency declarations. Her letter read that the Help Cities Lead Campaign project team identifies five regulatory measures where additional authority would be instrumental for municipalities in accelerating climate action; regulating GHG emissions for new buildings; mandatory home energy labelling; property assessed clean energy financing; regulating GHG emissions for existing buildings; and mandatory building energy benchmarking and reporting.
The Mayor of Victoria asked the City of Parksville to communicate their support directly to the Minister of Environmental and Climate Change Strategy, the Minister of Municipal Affairs, the Minister of Energy, Mines and Low-Carbon Innovation, the Minister of Finance and the Attorney General and Minister responsible for Housing.
During the meeting on Wednesday, council did not make a motion on whether they would comply with the request.
