City of Greater Sudbury declared a climate emergency 5 years ago. It's not on track to meet its goals

Five years ago, the City of Greater Sudbury declared a climate emergency.

It's a day Naomi Grant remembers well.

"There was a climate action petition submitted on that same day and it had over 2,000 signatures from all across Greater Sudbury," said Grant, who chairs the Coalition for a Liveable Sudbury.

"There was the biggest turnout ever in council chambers."

More than 300 people of all ages filled the council chambers for the declaration. Some had to stand in the foyer because there wasn't enough space inside, Grant recalled.

Along with declaring a climate emergency, the city set a few goals to address climate change at a local level.

The first, and most significant, was for Sudbury to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. That means the emissions the city produces through transportation and heating buildings, for example, are in balance with the emissions removed from the atmosphere by planting trees, or other methods.

To reach that end goal, the city also set two shorter-term objectives. They were to reduce carbon emissions by 25 per cent by 2025 and a 55 per cent reduction by 2030.

According to a city report, there are indications the municipality is not on track to meet the 2025 goal.

"The sense in the community around climate action at the city right now is generally a feeling of disappointment," Grant said.

Grant said the city has done some important groundwork in the last five years, including the approval of a community energy and emissions plan — which set the city's greenhouse gas targets — and the implementation of a climate adaptation plan.

Staff reports to the city now include climate impact as a consideration. 

Stephen Monet, the city's manager of environmental planning initiatives, said the city did surpass expectations for greenhouse gas reductions in 2021, primarily due to a decrease of emissions during the lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic. But it still falls short of meeting that 2025 goal.

The city was projected to produce more than 1.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2021,  through municipal buildings and its fleet of vehicles, and produced just under 1.5 million tonnes instead.

"Although we're not on track, we are exactly the same as every other country worldwide as stated by the UN. Nobody is really on track for meeting the commitments from a greenhouse gas emission perspective," Monet said.

The city's Community Energy and Emissions Plan set out 18 goals to help reduce emissions, and Monet said it's currently falling short on two of those goals. They are to establish a renewable energy cooperative and to set up a ground mount of a 10 megawatt solar array by 2022.

But Monet said encouraging active transportation and public transit use, along with electrifying the city's fleet of vehicles, are important steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

On public transit use, the city did see a 47 per cent increase in ridership from 2021 to 2022 as recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic started.

"We now have more transit riders than we did even pre COVID," Monet said.

But as of January, the city had 12 electric vehicles in its fleet, with two more on the way at that time. That represents two per cent of the total fleet.

The goal is for all city-owned vehicles to be electric by 2035.

After the city declared a climate emergency, it established a climate action resource team to explore ways to reduce carbon emissions whenever new projects are approved.

While the city can work on reducing emissions at its buildings and through its fleet, Monet said, reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 will have to be a community effort.

Basically you need all hands on deck.- Alexandra Mallett, Carleton University

Some projects, such as building more clean energy sources, will need to be left to the private sector or other levels of government. Individuals can also make efforts in their own lives to reduce their emissions, whether it's using active transportation or retrofitting their homes to be greener.

Alexandra Mallett, an associate professor in sustainable energy and climate policy at Ottawa's Carleton University, says even just declaring a climate emergency is a positive step forward.

"Basically you need all hands on deck," she said. 

"You need everybody in this together because this is happening here and now and it's not going to go away with conventional."

Mallett notes Sudbury was a pioneer with its regreening initiatives to fix the damage caused by decades of acid rain from mining industry emissions. 

"If Sudbury can regreen and reinvent itself, I think that cities are going to be the forerunners of where we're actually going to see sustaining change," she said.