Corporate Emissions Action Plan

The City of Surrey is committed to fostering a livable and resilient community through action on sustainability. This begins with leadership in our own operations.

To demonstrate this, we have committed to reducing corporate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to absolute zero before 2050. Check out the Sustainability Dashboard to see how we’re doing in our efforts to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from City facilities, fleet and contractors.

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 GHG emissions – to net zero community wide and absolute zero corporate emissions before 2050. Once finalized and adopted, the Climate Change Action Strategy will guide our work on reducing Surrey's corporate GHG emissions and future updates to the Corporate Emissions Action Plan.

Corporate Emissions Action Plan

The Corporate Emissions Action Plan (CEAP) outlines the City of Surrey's strategies to reduce energy and emissions through operating choices, fuel switching, and innovations to City facilities, fleets, infrastructure, and engagement.

The CEAP identifies actions and defines targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions across the organization. It also outlines implementation requirements, roles and responsibilities, monitoring and reporting requirements, and financing opportunities to assist with plan implementation.

In response to Council’s Climate Change Emergency declaration in November 2019 and City’s new absolute zero emissions target for corporate operations, staff are working to update the CEAP and integrate actions across the organization.

Corporate Actions to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions

We are reducing corporate greenhouse gas emissions through a number of actions, including testing new technologies and approaches that demonstrate leadership and innovation:

• Our energy-efficient City Hall building includes a District Energy System powered by geothermal heating and cooling technology.
• Clayton Community Centre is the first community centre to achieve Passive House certification in North America and is Canada’s largest Passive House facility to date (as of 2021).
• The City Centre Library and the Surrey Animal Care Facility have both received Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification.
• The Organic Waste Biofuel Processing Facility turns the City's organic waste into a 100% renewable natural gas to power our fleet vehicles and our District Energy System.
• We've purchased a number of low- and zero-emission vehicles, including several 100% electric vehicles and a full fleet of compressed natural gas waste collection trucks.

International Commitments

The City of Surrey is committed to working collaboratively with international partners to demonstrate and promote leadership on climate action.

Surrey is part of the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy (GCoM), the world's largest coalition of city leaders addressing climate change by pledging to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

We report our corporate and community GHG emissions through the Carbon Disclosure Project, which is aligned with the reporting requirements of GCoM.

Clean Energy Technologies

Review one of the City of Surrey's first corporate sustainability planning processes for clean energy demonstration projects that promote clean energy technologies. These included:

• power generation
• power conservation
• developing a clean energy hub, and
• testing clean energy vehicles.

Initially explored in 2012, these projects were foundational to Surrey’s efforts to reduce corporate greenhouse gas emissions, having since led to permanent operational changes and the steady transition to low- and zero-emission technologies

For more information about sustainability goals in Surrey, see our Sustainability Charter.