Back to SearchKitchener Approves Corporate Climate Action Plan
Kitchener, ON – Kitchener City Council approved the city’s first Corporate Climate Action Plan yesterday during a session of council. The action plan is a detailed strategy to reduce the city’s greenhouse gas emissions by 8 per cent by 2026. Numerous changes in five key areas will allow the city to mitigate its contribution to climate change and adapt the city’s infrastructure to protect against increasingly unstable weather.
“For many people, the scale and complexity of climate change seems insurmountable. What we’ve done with the Corporate Climate Action Plan is explain how it fits into the bigger picture,” said Claire Bennett, Kitchener’s Corporate Sustainability Officer. “The Paris Agreement outlines how the world will work together to achieve our goals globally, the federal plan outlines how Canada will work together to achieve its goals nationally and this plan explains how Kitchener will achieve our community’s goals.”
The five key areas identified as opportunities are:
- Buildings
- Pumping Stations
- Fleet
- Outdoor Lighting
- Waste
Several actions are proposed by the plan in each of these areas. For city buildings, these actions include updated energy efficiency targets for new facilities, retrofits for inefficient equipment, proactive maintenance schedules and conducting deep energy retrofits during major renovations.
“I’m proud to support the Corporate Climate Action Plan,” said Councillor Kelly Galloway-Sealock, Chair of the Community and Infrastructure Services Committee. “It lays out a concrete set of actions that will achieve our emissions goal, with a detailed process for measurement and accountability. It will track the impact of our actions, tonne by tonne.”
No funding was allocated to the Corporate Climate Action Plan as part of its approval. Any requests for funding related to a specific action proposed by the plan will go through the city’s normal annual budgeting process.
The full plan can be found at kitchener.ca/sustainability.
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For more information, please contact:
Phil Price
Communications and Marketing Associate
City of Kitchener
philip.price@kitchener.ca
519 741 2200 x 7383
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