GBA Update - Summer 2020

7 ≥ www.georgianbay.ca GBA UPDATE Summer 2020 more cost effective with increased membership. The door is open for new councils to join at any time, so that they can receive support, resources and experience to assist them in identifying best-value strategies for reducing GHG emissions within their own community and collectively as a region. From Data to Action ICECAP’s first step is the development of a baseline GHG emissions inventory for each member. Establishing a GHG emissions baseline is a useful tool that identifies opportunities for reducing GHG emissions and informs the development of a GHG reduction action plan. These tasks help to estimate cost savings from GHG emissions reductions and serve as a reference point to track improvements over time. ICECAP measures the amount of corporate GHG emissions produced by each council’s internal operations, such as: the vehicle fleet; buildings like arenas, fire halls, community centres; GHG emissions from waste produced from internal operations and local landfills; streetlights; and water or wastewater energy use. ICECAP conducts a separate analysis for a baseline of community GHG emissions produced by residents’ daily activities in homes, businesses, institutions, and during transportation [figures 1 and 2]. For both of these calculations the baseline year selected is 2016 – the census year where the most data was available. Community members can assist in the data collection process by visiting gbbr.ca/ carbon-calculator/ . In this tool developed by the GBBR, community members will receive a calculation of their GHG emissions after completing a short survey about their energy consumption and solid waste production. Benjamin John, Climate Change & Energy Specialist at GBBR, says: “The difficulty in calculating GHG emission baselines [figures 3 and 4] is that some data is hard to obtain Figures 1 and 2: Data sources for calculating community (left) and corporate (right) greenhouse gas emissions. Continues on page 8