PCP Greenhouse Gas Emissions Community and Corporate Reduction Plans for the City of Vaughan

Building on previous sustainability initiatives, the City of Vaughan will develop a community and a corporate greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction plan to improve the environmental performance of municipal facilities and services and reduce GHG emissions in the community. A member of the Partners for Climate Protection (PCP) program since 2011, the city has already established a GHG inventory (milestone one), and now seeks to achieve milestones two and three at both the corporate and community levels.The City of Vaughan will develop the Community-Wide Local Action Plan in collaboration with a steering committee comprised of community stakeholders that represent a range of interests and demographics. The city will conduct extensive public consultation to address public concerns and ensure that local ideas are reflected in the development process and final plan. The consultation will also identify groups that may become responsible for implementing and monitoring the success of specific actions. Outreach activities will encompass in-person events and online engagement, using Ideascale, a specialized tool for gathering feedback on proposed actions to reduce GHGs. After a first round of public consultation, the city will consider proposed actions using a triple bottom line evaluation of potential environmental, social and economic impacts. Finally, Vaughan will develop an implementation and monitoring strategy, which will help conduct future reviews of the plan in order to complete Milestones 4 and 5 of the PCP program. Vaughan will look at reducing GHGs through residential, commercial and industrial energy improvements, transportation and solid waste management. They will also explore options for water conservation and brownfield redevelopment, through incentives to attract renewable energy companies to locate their infrastructure on brownfield sites. The City of Vaughan will develop the Corporate Energy Conservation and Demand Management Plan in-house, by establishing GHG reduction targets through benchmarking and conducting energy audits of 28 city owned buildings. The Building and Facilities Department and the Environmental Sustainability Office will then use the audit findings to help develop a five year action plan.Both plans will be closely integrated with existing city initiatives such as the Corporate Strategic Plan and the Sustainability and Environmental Master Plan. The plans will also be shared with the Greater Toronto Area Clean Air Council, the York Region Environmental Advisory Committee, and the York Region Environmental Initiatives work group.