The Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD), the District of Sechelt and the Town of Gibsons were all honoured last week for their efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The three governments are members of Partners for Climate Protection (PCP), which is a results orientated network of Canadian municipal governments committed to reducing emissions and acting on climate change.
The governments were recognized at the recent Sustainable Communities Conference in Ottawa for having achieved different milestones within the PCP program.
The program has five milestones, which are to create an emissions inventory and forecast, set an emissions reductions target, develop a local action plan, implement the local action plan or set of activities and monitor progress and report results.
The SCRD was recognized for reaching level three -developing a local action plan.
In order to qualify for the honour, the SCRD completed and adopted both their corporate and community energy emissions plans.
"Sustainability and climate protection have long been a part of the SCRD's core values, policies and programs," said SCRD board chair Garry Nohr. "Since joining the PCP program in 2007, the SCRD has made considerable progress in planning and implementing policies and actions to reduce corporate and community emissions. We are very proud to be recognized in the program."
The District of Sechelt is also pleased to have made it to level three in the program.
"We started in 2010 following the PCP program and we are already at level three," said District of Sechelt manager of sustainability and special projects Emanuel Machado. "I say already because it's taken other cities many years to get to level three, but we did relatively well in short order."
The Town of Gibsons has been recognized for making it to milestone one, but Town planner Michael Epp said they are close to a level two award.
"We got recognized for milestone one for our community emissions [plan], so that's because we participated in the [SCRD community energy emissions plan]. So it's the preparation of the plan. We did not get recognized for milestone two, which is the endorsement of the target," he said, noting the Town has yet to revise their official community plan to incorporate the target. "So we're probably fairly close to achieving milestone two, but we haven't actually done it yet."
Epp said the Town has made it to milestone two in its corporate initiatives. "There are two tracks. There's the internal, our organization, our fleet and buildings, and that's the corporate side, and we are at milestone two there," Epp said.
The Town of Gibsons has downsized vehicles, replaced trucks with smart cars and introduced hybrid vehicles to their fleet to cut back on corporate emissions.
