Community Energy & Emissions Plan

Climate Action Now

We are developing a new Climate Change Action Strategy to reduce our carbon pollution and improve the community's resilience to climate change impacts. The strategy will outline the City’s plan to meet bold targets, set by Surrey City Council in 2020, to reduce carbon pollution – also known as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions – to net zero community wide and absolute zero corporate emissions before 2050. Once finalized and adopted, the Climate Change Action Strategy will replace the Community Energy & Emissions Plan in guiding our work on reducing Surrey's community GHG emissions.

Community Energy & Emissions Plan

The Community Energy & Emissions Plan, along with the Climate Adaptation Strategy, makes up Surrey's existing Community Climate Action Strategy. It outlines our guide to reducing community energy spending and GHG emissions and helps guide the City’s broader efforts in establishing Surrey as a thriving, modern urban centre.

The Community Energy & Emissions Plan set the targets to reduce GHG by 33% per capita below 2007 levels before 2020, and 80% per capita before 2050.

The Community Energy & Emissions Plan guides the City in achieving these GHG reduction targets in the following areas:

• Land Use: Encourage safe, walkable, complete, compact neighbourhoods.
• Transportation: Support walking, cycling, transit, green cars.
• Buildings: Build efficient new buildings and promote energy retrofits in existing ones.
• Energy Infrastructure: Establish sustainable energy supply systems, including district energy.
• Solid Waste: Reduce, re-use, recycle, and recover energy from waste.

Community Energy & Emissions Plan Documents

• Community Energy and Emissions Plan (Full Document)
• Supplementary Material: Power Conservation Analysis
• Supplementary Material: CEEMAP Methodology

Reducing Emissions

As part of the Community Energy & Emissions Plan, Surrey has been reducing GHG emissions community wide by:

• Updating the Official Community Plan to include energy and climate change policies.
• Building a District Energy System in City Centre.
• Supporting the development of Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure across the City.
• Implementing an organic waste collection program powered by low-carbon CNG vehicles.
• Working with community partners to offer climate change awareness activities within Surrey schools.
• Increasing bike routes and sustainable transportation options for Surrey residents.

The City also leads by reducing energy use and GHG emissions in our own operations through the Corporate Emissions Action Plan.

Community Energy & Emissions Plan Background

To develop the Community Energy & Emissions Plan, we engaged the community and key stakeholders on different alternatives to shift future energy demand and supply in Surrey. Development of the Community Energy & Emissions Plan began in 2011. A community energy and emission profile was completed, along with a projection of energy and emission growth based on current plans. The City met with key stakeholders to identify high level strategies and priorities to inform the Plan’s development, and engaged youth in developing a vision for a low carbon community.

In 2012, participants were invited to the ENERGYShift Panel and Open House, where they indicated a high degree of support for retrofit programs, renewable energy and increased efficiency in new buildings, high speed transit, active transportation infrastructure, and low emission vehicles.

Based on input from stakeholders, a range of options were developed within 5 strategy areas: land use, transportation, buildings, energy supply, and waste. To evaluate the impacts of various options and help guide the decision-making process, 3 broad policy bundles were defined:

• Current Plans: A future guided by the policy and plans that the City currently has in place, as well as estimates of where other governments and agencies are headed with regards to energy and emission reductions.
• Scenario 1: A future that sees distributed infill in existing neighbourhoods, focused growth in all Town Centres, City Centre and transit corridors, and a modest increase in high quality public transit and district energy.
• Scenario 2: A future that sees concentrated growth in City Centre, some Town Centres and transit corridors, and significant increases in active transportation infrastructure, rapid transit and district energy.

In December 2012, we invited Surrey residents to the ENERGYShift Cafe, where participants developed lots of innovative strategy ideas after learning about the background to ENERGYShift and getting an overview of the plan's draft strategies.

In January 2013, stakeholders were invited to comment on and help refine the draft strategies. The final strategies were adopted by Council in November 2013.