Clean Air Partnership

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Southwestern Ontario Clean Air Council Proceedings

Southwestern Ontario Clean Air Council March 11th, 2009 Meeting Proceedings

Councillor Paul Hubert, Chair –City of London Environment and Transportation Committee – Charting a New Direction on Sustainable Energy
Video 

  • We cannot fulfill our commitments without partnerships.
  • London has worked with CAP, federal and provincial governments, cities of Windsor and Woodstock to explore the potential of setting up this Council in Southwestern Ontario.
  • We can learn much from the GTA-CAC, but there are many unique issues: for example our geography and proximity to the U.S.
  • This spring our city staff will be undertaking public consultations aimed at charting a new course for conservation and sustainable energy: will use incentive-based, education based and bylaw based tools needed to move forward on sustainable energy, climate change and air quality issues.

Mayor Eddie Francis, Windsor
Video 

We are committed to working together with stakeholders in our region.

  • We are finding an activated constituency that wants to do something about air quality and it is our responsible to lead the need for change.
  • What we’re talking about today is creating a forum for our municipalities and our region, so we can effect change.

Mayor Michael Harding, Woodstock
Video 

  • What began a long time ago in Hudson, QC with action on pesticides has put municipalities in a position to effect change. Supreme Court determined municipalities have a responsibility for health and safety of community.

Purpose of the meeting, Eva Ligeti, Executive Director, Clean Air Partnership
Video / Presentation

  • Air quality is best dealt with on an airshed basis.
  • After 2000 Smog Summit, 8 municipalities began attending meetings. Today we have 26 municipal governments meeting monthly.
  • We’re looking at the interface between science and policy. CAC is a place where we can discuss the latest strategies, the latest science
  • We can’t individually develop these programs, the best thing is to develop policies together that everyone can use.
  • Yet one size doesn’t fit all. We realize because of geography, local economy, local differences that we can’t just take the programs from Toronto or Portland and apply them here. We looking for programs that can work here.
  • This region poses some unique air quality challenges as it is both urban and rural. Close proximity to U.S. Reports consistently show there are hot spots in the region where the air quality is poor.
  • Need to collaboratively work on social marketing, people listen across jurisdictions. Eg. 20/20 The Way to Clean Air.
  • Extreme weather events costs millions of dollars – tends to fall on municipalities. Much has to do with planning.
  • We bring applied research from scientists to policymakers to facilitate improvement of air quality, reduction in ghgs, to build urban resiliency, work collaboratively to social market outreach to our staff and the public, we highlight best practices beyond our borders, we bring together senior decision makers so we don’t make these decisions in isolation, and we develop these communities of practice to foster local networks in the region and to collaborate the emissions in our shared airshed.

Dan Roumbanis: Environment Canada’s Air Pollution Emission Inventories
Video / Presentation

  • Air pollutant emission inventories collected by Environment Canada and can be provided to municipalities.
  • Collect this info to support our policy development; to support our international negotiations for emissions reductions; and to report on any domestic or international agreements we might have eg. Canada-U.S. air quality agreement
  • They help develop air quality emissions inventories collaboratively at federal, provincial and territorial levels.
  • The inventory provides statistical information, point source monitoring.
  • Published on environment Canada website
  • We’re also looking at web-mapping, hopefully available in the summer
  • Municipalities can take our data and make some very interesting follow-up and policy decisions.

Jamie Skimming: City of London
Video / Presentation

  • London traditionally addressed air quality and climate change issues via the common root cause burning of fossil fuels – so when dealing with the public it is all about reducing energy use.
  • What can London do? The things we control directly: municipal operations, green vehicles, landfill, energy use in buildings and we can influence – residential energy use, transportation choices, small businesses.
  • London received a detailed inventory from the Federal government last summer. 160 different types of emissions sources. Conclusions from inventory: its confirmed that our tactic of focusing on energy use is good since electricity is a major contributor to smog and climate change. What is tricky is how do we deal with vehicles? We don’t want to encourage people to drive more. We have to think more about getting people not to use lawnmowers and weed-whackers, fireplaces,. We will be doing a public consultation on sustainable energy. Should we offer incentives, ban use of 2-stroke lawnmowers, restrictions on use of mowers during smog alerts? The inventory doesn’t tell us how much of the emissions come from particular sources.

Speaker Barry Jessiman, Section Head, Air Quality Assessment Section, Health Canada
Video

  • The biggest issue that’s developed in air science is that PM and Ozone appear in non-threshold pollutants, previously this had been confined to carcinogens but on a population basis at least it is becoming very clear that these two pollutants have effects on human health right down to background levels. It has changed the game in relation to regulation of smog and the understanding of these health effects because it raises the specter of these two pollutants.
  • Since 1990 the emphasis has shifted from effect on respiratory health to cardiac health. It appears the largest effect of air pollution is on cardiac health
  • Economics is also becoming a big player in how we do our analysis: the Canadian Medical Association released a report last year detailing health care spending associated with air pollution, lost productivity. They calculated that air pollution is a player in billions of dollars in social welfare costs. Premature mortality in the tens of billions of dollars tends to be a driver in regulation.

Mayor Anne Marie DeCicco-Best – London
Video 

  • We are trying to find ways each of us can do our own part, and what we can do collectively as well. This is why a forum like this is a very positive initiative.

Climate Change

Speaker Ralph Torrie, Managing Director Navigant Consulting: Economic Renewal and Local Climate Change Strategies: Two Sides of the Same Coin?
Video / Presentation 

  • Economic costs of climate change is mind-boggling. It was never the economy that we get when we reduce ghg emissions that we have to worry about. It’s the economy we get with the business as usual approach that we have to worry about. Economic consequences will eat us alive – eg. Insurance costs, interruption of food and water supply, flooding of coastal cities, disease vectors
  • Consider the ghg emissions from the end-user not the supplier- not one major emitter, but a variety
  • Look for technologies with very little emissions eg. House in Saskatoon, green buildings using 75% less fuel. Green buildings are also healthier to live in. not just the savings. They’ve got daylight, greenery, healthier air. Improves productivity, it pays the fuel bills
  • Low emission future- efficiency half the picture – double and re-double the efficiency, use of combined heat and power. What is stopping this? We have the technologies, they make economic sense. What we are missing is the business, logistical, and institutional infrastructure for getting it done.
  • To close, local governments are in a very powerful position to influence. Eg. Recycling, building permits. You simply cannot achieve a deep and long-lasting transition to a low carbon future without local government’s active engagement. You’ve got to understand local circumstances in order to put together the institutional, economic development, logistical and financing strategies that will work in the community.
  • Opportunities will vary from one locality to the next. You’ve got to have climate literacy in city hall. Must understand the connection between environmental stress and what the city buys and operates.
  • On average the typical expenditure of electricity per capita in Ontario is $2000. Southwestern Ontario totals $2 billion a year for all households. How much of that stays in Southwestern Ontario? If you can take that money and start to design through public and private approaches and design cooperative approaches that will allow job creating energy saving employment – money starts to circulate in the local economy.
  • Start thinking of environmental renewal and economic renewal as two sides of same coin. It’s amazing how inexpensive this can be.

A Regional Clean Air Council – the GTA-CAC experience: Louise Aubin, Region of Peel
Video 

  • GTA-CAC and the benefits of partnership: you can make things happen faster
  • Peel has been a member of GTA-CAC since 2001
  • At first we started with the easy things, i.e. education. Over time we’ve seen a real maturation of the kinds of things the CAC deals with, as well as the issues the municipalities deal with.
  • The GTA-CAC meets monthly. After the meeting Peel’s regional air quality working group meets up. The research and discussions are disseminated to all the Peel departments i.e. energy or public health
  • Annual report since 2001 signed by all commissioners within the region. This has led to a corporate clean air strategy that looks at how we can be more energy efficient internally.
  • Clean Air Partnership has been critical. It facilitates information between all tiers of government. No finger pointing, an opportunity to learn what other municipalities are doing. It provides better coordination of clean air initiatives across the GTA eg. Consortiums for purchasing. Significant cost savings for the member. Saves on staff time for research, legal reviews where municipalities have split the cost. Eg. 20/20 The Way to Clean Air’s printing costs split over all the municipalities.

GTA CAC Experience - Gabriella Kalapos 
Video / Presentation 

  • Priorities of the council collaboratively decided. As the declaration is developed it goes to councils, and a political representative comes to annual smog summits to endorse the declaration and to make announcements of their individual clean air actions they will undertake in the coming year
  • Declaration tries to identify the research gaps, identifies key emerging issues, and it tries to build up collaboration on each of the activities.