Lethbridge City Hall. (Lethbridge News Now)

By David Opinko

City on pace to reduce corporate carbon emissions by 35%

Mar 2, 2020 | 4:10 PM

LETHBRIDGE, AB – If a series of capital projects go ahead over the next decade, the City of Lethbridge should achieve a proposed greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction goal.

The city’s Environmental Sustainability Analyst Evan Comeau presented at Monday’s Community Issues Committee, suggesting that council implement a goal of reducing GHG emissions by 35 per cent under 2018’s levels by 2030.

This goal would only look at infrastructure owned by the local government. Later in 2020, he plans to set a target for lowering residential and commercial emissions.

“We just felt that, as a first presentation to council about greenhouse gas emissions, to sort of be cautious and to rely on the lower side of what we’d want.”

He says a 20 per cent reduction would be achieved through 11 capital projects that are already planned by the city. The other 15 per cent hinges on the federal government phasing out coal power by 2030 and switching to electricity from natural gas.

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Currently planned capital projects and their impact on carbon emissions. (Supplied by City of Lethbridge)

In 2018, infrastructure owned by the city generated 165,708 tonnes of carbon dioxide. Assuming the current trends of population growth and if none of the planned projects end up happening, CO2 emissions would rise by approximately 25 per cent by 2023.

Comeau says the majority of corporate emissions in Lethbridge comes from the landfill as the garbage it contains generates large amounts of methane.

The city is planning to start construction this summer on a landfill gas capture system, which would account for the bulk of the planned emissions cut.

“What this landfill gas capture system would do is suck [methane] out of the ground and capture it. I believe we will flare it to begin with, so that converts it back into carbon dioxide, which means that we’re effectively reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 25-28 times.”

Construction on this initiative is set to start in the summer of 2020 and be operational next year.

A similar project at the wastewater treatment plant aims to convert methane from sewage into electricity that can help to power the facility.

Since it appears that the city can feasibly reach the proposed 35 per cent reduction target without doing any additional work beyond what is already planned, Mayor Chris Spearman asked why the target is not more ambitious.

Comeau says they took a bottom-up approach with the target, meaning they look at what is currently being done and come up with a number based on that. It can, however, be raised at a later date.

City council was not asked at Monday’s meeting to officially adopt the target. The presentation was merely for information.

They might, however, choose to vote on the matter at a later date.