There is no negativity in this story on Regina’s Sustainable City Plan. Or sarcasm.
City Hall | Paul Dechene | April 7, 2022
Repeat after me: focus on the silver lining, not the cloud.
This is a good news column. I am not going to do that thing where I take a mundane decision from council and spin it out to 1,300 words of gripes and concerns.
No, because today’s news is good.
City council voted unanimously at their March 30 meeting to pass the Energy & Sustainability Framework. Unanimously. A lot of people have been working for a very long time to make this happen.
So, I’m definitely not going to focus on how it took four years to get from the initial unanimous vote in 2018 to develop a plan to make Regina a 100 per cent renewable city by 2050 to actually having the plan in hand. [1]
Four years! The time it takes most people to get a whole-ass university degree.
No. Water under the bridge. Better to focus on what’s in the Framework we have. Such as how, of the Seven Big Moves [2], the city is making building retrofits a priority. And we won’t even have to wait a year for a report outlining options for how the city might involve itself in that process as each Big Move comes with an implementation strategy and, in the case of Building Retrofits, city administration has committed to having a retrofit incentive program up and running in time for this year’s construction season.
What? No pilot project? Amazing!
Best not to dwell then on the techno-fantasist assumptions underpinning the Framework, such as Big Move Five: Low-Emissions Vehicles Actions, in which the plan anticipates 80 per cent of new light-duty personal-use vehicles (read: cars) purchased in Regina will be electric vehicles by 2025 — i.e., just three years away. And how 100 per cent of new cars will be electric by 2030. From just-a-few to one hundred per cent — in eight years!
Has the consultant even met Regina? [3]
Set that all aside, as that’s just one move out of seven. Instead, look at how the Framework does not define itself as a drive for efficiency and the cost-savings from green energy. Rather, the Framework puts climate change front and centre. The introduction starts with “Climate change is an unprecedented threat to global social, economic, and environmental systems.” It later continues: “Regina’s economic reliance on the natural resources and agriculture industries creates an imperative to act on climate change.”
Language far more palatable to Saskatchewan’s climate-denying residents [4] could have been used. [5] But the drafters of the Framework chose to confront the climate crisis directly.
So maybe we can let it slide that the Framework gives very short-shrift to proven carbon-emission reduction strategies, like limiting sprawl and increasing urban density.
Oh, it’s in there, but it’s clearly tacked on at the end.
And maybe we shouldn’t worry too much that when ward four councillor, Lori Bresciani [6], at the March 24 special executive committee meeting to consider the Framework, asked, “Is there evidence to support the claim that higher density enhances livability and quality of life?” [7] and Brittany MacLean from the city’s consultant Sustainability Solution Group replied:
“When we first started doing community energy and emissions plans a long time ago, density was core and central to that because there weren’t electric vehicles and it was hard to build a net zero home, it was quite expensive … So we know that technically, yes, we can create now a net-zero plan that relies completely on net-zero homes and electric vehicles and we can forget about transit & active transportation and densification.” [emphasis added.]
MacLean pointed out that the only reason limiting sprawl and improving transit [8] are in the Framework is because of feedback from the community who wanted an Energy & Sustainability Framework that included even people who couldn’t afford to buy a new electric vehicle.
People like me.
And maybe you.
So congratulations, everybody! You made the Framework better than it would have been if the consultant had been left to their own devices.
See? I told you. Good news!
NOTES
1. And I’m definitely not going to do that thing where I write footnotes that rival the article in length in which I cover fussy background details, like how the 2018 renewable city vote was undermined by the mayor at the time who asserted afterward that the pledge would only apply to city operations and the council of the day had to reassert the original intent of the motion months later. Or details like how instead of quickly producing a Framework (as directed), city administration recommended hosting a sustainable cities conference instead. And how, when the speaker list for that was announced, the keynote turned out to be noted climate-science denier Patrick Moore.
2. The Seven Big Moves: Retrofit Buildings, Clean Heating, Net-Zero New Construction, Renewable Energy Generation, Low-Emissions Vehicles, Increase Active Transportation and Transit Use, Clean and Re-Energize Industry.
3. Expect skyrocketing sales of discounted new medium-and-heavy duty personal-use internal-combustion-engine vehicles (read: trucks and vans).
4. And climate-denying government.
5. Hell, our COVID-cancelled sustainable city conference was going to have a climate denier as the keynote (see footnote 1).
6. Who won her council seat by acclamation in the 2020 municipal election.
7. Bresciani co-signed the Density Target for Market Choice of Housing Motion with councillors Bob Hawkins and Landon Mohl. It calls for consultation with developers and clearly anticipates loosening the Official Community Plan’s density targets. Report expected later this year.
8. The next test of the Framework comes April 27 when the Transit Master Plan comes to executive committee. Local climate activists have been calling for fare-free transit for youth under 18. Our Framework consultant, SSG, just told council you don’t need good transit to achieve a net-zero city. Great. Thanks for the assist, SSG. /sarcasm