Vancouver’s vision fuels fossil foolery

Guest Commentary
By Fabian Dawson

 

Vancouver’s Renewable City Strategy is ambitious, unrealistic and fossil foolery that will make our community, which is already one of the most expensive places to work and live in, more unaffordable.

Designed by a ‘Gang Green’ operating out of City Hall, this plan reeks of a personal agenda to be hailed as planet leaders in the fight against climate change.

Look we all want to do our bit to make our world more sustainable, renewable and environmentally conscious.

The key issues, which seem to have been ignored by City Hall at the expense of its citizens, is price, pace and practicality.

Last week, Simon Fraser University’s school of Energy and Materials Research examined the City of Vancouver’s Renewable City Strategy, which aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050 and derive 100% of the city’s energy needs from renewable energy.

“Are the claims of city governments and the advocates of urban climate action realistic, or simply more of the ineffectual hype that one sees all too often with the climate challenge?” the report’s authors ask.

The answer to this question is evident given City Hall’s loud rhetoric and vague responses to its plan.

One aspect of the city’s strategy is the proposed ban on natural gas.

City Hall insists there is no ban on natural gas and that any interpretation of its policy is simply fake news.

But go beyond the rhetoric and it is plain to see that the policies, if enacted, will result in a ban on natural gas within city limits to be replaced with a questionable and a pricier suite of options including renewable natural gas.

The SFU report concludes that “large supplies of RNG will not be available to the Vancouver region at a cost that is competitive with renewable electricity for building end-uses.”

Simply put, renewable natural gas, typically made from the methane from landfills and composting facilities, is just not economically feasible according to the experts.

If Vancouver’s Renewable City Strategy requires everyone to switch to renewable natural gas, we would need 104 more large landfill facilities says FortisBC.

The SFU report concludes Vancouver’s Renewable City Strategy sets targets but without specific policies for meeting them.

This has led to confusion and scenarios that Vancouver in the future will be a city without balconies and sealed buildings, people having to pay more for having a gas barbeque, restaurants without gas burners, no parking spots for vehicles using petrol or natural gas and a range of punitive measures to force us to comply with the green vision.

City Hall is also spending millions of its tax dollars to push this agenda while the provincial government has designed a future for BC around natural gas exports.

So what are we going to say to target countries about our natural gas exports when they ask if it is not good enough for your biggest city, why should it be good enough for us.

To be successful, Vancouver’s Renewable City Strategy, needs support from senior and neighbouring municipal governments.

So far that is not coming while our tax dollars are being spent to push this agenda which basically takes away our right to choose our energy sources.

Vancouver’s Renewable City Strategy, needs a renewal because right now it’s all about winning the race to be a green giant by trampling over its citizens.

Fabian Dawson is a journalist, author and filmmaker who has lived in Vancouver for the last 30 years.

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