The Narwhal
Summary
The City of Winnipeg is taking its next steps towards a net-zero emissions future; a committee of council unanimously approved an ambitious, multi-billion dollar ‘roadmap’ Tuesday, with hopes of getting there by 2050.
The Community Energy Investment Roadmap was commissioned by council in 2020. Meant to accompany the city’s broader guiding documents (OurWinnipeg2045 and the 2018 Climate Action Plan), the roadmap outlines a series of targets for reducing emissions.
Homes, businesses, institutions and industrial buildings contribute about 44 per cent of the city’s emissions, the roadmap notes, with about 93 per cent of those emissions traced back to natural gas heating. Curbing those emissions would require “deep retrofits” to improve energy and thermal efficiency, while also switching to efficient electric heat pumps (which work by exchanging heat from outdoor and indoor air).
Shifting to electric power for heating and fuel will put extra pressure on the city’s energy grid. Though efficiency upgrades, particularly in buildings, will help curb some of that increased power demand, the roadmap recommends diversifying the clean energy grid with rooftop solar power (installed on new buildings, parking lots and in community solar gardens), geothermal district energy (harnessing heat from sewer pipes and ground source heat pumps, for example), and biogas collection from landfills. By 2050, the roadmap recommends diverting 100 per cent of methane emissions from landfills for power generation and ensuring 50 per cent of any building’s annual electricity load comes from renewable sources other than hydro, in order to diversify the clean grid.
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