BANFF – The Town of Banff hopes to take additional steps towards implementing its climate action plan despite facing tough economic challenges with the COVID-19 pandemic.
At a council a meeting on Monday (Sept 21), administration wanted to take council’s pulse on some of the initiatives in the proposed 2021-23 climate action work plan, which do come with costs, ahead of 2021 service review and budget deliberations.
With Sally Biddlecombe filling a new municipal energy coordinator position in May, administrative officials say now is a great time to make real progress on the climate action file in keeping with commitments made by council in December last year.
“I’d like to see us be able to capitalize on that if possible, but it’s impossible at the same time to talk about climate change without talking about it in the context of COVID-19,” said Michael Hay, the Town of Banff’s environmental manager.
“What does climate action look like in a COVID-19 world, a world that could carry on for years? We’re all very optimistic at this stage that there will be a vaccine coming, but it’s also possible that won’t happen and we’ll be dealing with a challenged tourism industry for a longer period.”
The Town of Banff has a goal to achieve 30 per cent emissions reductions by 2030, and 80 per cent by 2050 compared to 2016 levels, and get to 100 per cent renewable energy community-wide by 2050, including electricity, heating and cooling, and transportation.
In December 2019, council directed administration to prepare a climate action work plan based on the municipality’s renewable energy transition roadmap for 2021-2022, including operating and capital budget requirements for council at 2021 service review.
This so-called renewable energy transition roadmap is Banff’s climate mitigation plan, which primarily focuses on reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the community, 95 per cent of which come from energy consumption.
The work plan revolves around four main areas – energy efficient buildings, generating local low-carbon energy, importing renewable energy and low-carbon transportation.
It includes 16 initiatives, such as existing programs like solar PV rebate program and the environmental rebate program and projects like the zero carbon transit garage and biomass district heating system in the industrial compound.
Newer projects in the proposed 2021-22 action plan include a major energy refit of Banff’s fire hall, updated building environmental designs, a new green power procurement strategy, a green power purchasing cooperative and micro-grid feasibility study.
There’s three projects that administration wants to focus on first – a comprehensive climate public engagement campaign, a clean energy improvement program and a multi-facility LED lighting upgrade.
One of the more interesting ones is the clean energy improvement program (CEIP), also commonly referred to as PACE (Property Assessed Clean Energy).
In 2018, the Alberta government passed legislation that allows municipalities to provide long-term financing to homeowners to support energy efficiency and renewable energy upgrades.
This would allow municipalities to loan homeowners up to 100 per cent of the project cost with no down payment required. Property owners would then repay the loan through an additional payment on their property tax bill.
“CEIP loans are attached to the property, not the individual, so are transferred from one owner to the next when properties are sold,” said Hay, adding a lien is attached to the property.
Hay said that Devon, Rocky Mountain House and Edmonton are all close to implementing a CEIP program, hopefully sometime in 2021, with Okotoks, Leduc and Canmore looking at it a bit further down the road.
Hay said it’s hoped the Municipal Climate Change Action Centre will do a preliminary report to examine opportunities and challenges associated with implementing a program in Banff, which is an Alberta municipality in a national park.
“That feasibility study would explore a few of the legal peculiarities specific to Banff, such as the need to adopt articles of entrustment to ensure provincial legislation is adopted here, and the fact that all the land in Banff is leasehold as opposed to freehold,” Hay said.
“There are some interesting details to work out before we start moving forward more earnestly on this project, but council will hopefully hear more about PACE over the next few months as we start to see how realistic this is for our community.”
Councillor Peter Poole thanked administration for the comprehensive report.
“I’m a real strong supporter of this part of the Town’s work from a long-term perspective,” he said, adding he was interested in the collective green energy purchasing efforts.
“How do you see group purchasing working and do we know other places where cooperative purchasing agreements have worked?”
If the Town elects to pursue an agreement to purchase renewable power directly from a project developer, Hay said it could be a unique opportunity to bring local institutions and businesses along in an agreement to purchase renewable energy as a cooperative.
He said this would increase the group’s buying power and dramatically expand the greenhouse gas emissions reduction potential of the venture.
“One of our challenges is there are quite large corporations in the town of Banff that are actually thinking about about this and some of them are out there doing this type of work,” he said.
“On the one hand, we want to lead. But on the other hand, it might make more sense for us to partner with a larger company as they try to achieve the same things.”
