At the September 16th Environment and Climate Change Committee (ECCC), the City of Ottawa staff presented our City's greenhouse gas emissions inventory reporting for the first time since 2021 (starts at bottom of page 32),
As CAFES has been advocating for the City to release these overdue reports for YEARS, we were very pleased with this development. Having accurate data on our city’s emissions is essential for organizations like CAFES to evaluate our progress and hold the city accountable to their climate promises. We want to thank the over 500 supporters that signed the CAFES petition calling on the City of Ottawa to release our greenhouse gas emissions inventory reports.
Unfortunately, the data leaves much to be desired. Absolute quantities of emissions are not listed in the report, making it difficult to reference exact numbers when discussing our emissions. The report shows concerning trends, notably that our emissions have been increasing since 2019, other than a drop during the COVID-19 pandemic. The report does not adequately explain what is responsible for this increase, and how we will meet our projected emissions reduction targets. As it stands, we are not on track to meet the goal of net-zero emissions by 2050 without course correction.
CAFES raised these concerns in a public delegation at the September 16th ECCC meeting. We asked that community members have an opportunity to meet with City staff to discuss the emissions data more in-depth. We are currently coordinating with the City's Climate Resiliency Unit to make this happen. You can see our delegation presentation here.
If you’d like to be involved in future discussions with the City concerning emissions data, please get in touch with Mitzi info@cafesottawa.ca.
