Low Carbon Future Summit Charting Roadmap toward a Sustainable Future on September 18th

On September 18th, The City of Calgary, an imagineCALGARY Partner, will host a Low Carbon Future Summit. All Calgarians are invited to attend and participate in the Summit, which will be a dialogue designed to develop specific, concrete ideas to reduce Calgary’s ecological footprint through actions that reduce our carbon output.

These actions will help realize several of the imagineCALGARY Targets that were developed to create a sustainable future for the community.

The Summit will take place on Friday, Sept. 18th, from 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. in the Heart Atrium, Heart Building, on the SAIT campus in NW Calgary.

Carey Booth, an Environmental Specialist with The City of Calgary’s Community Energy Initiative, recently offered an overview of the Low Carbon Summit, and what low carbon initiatives mean to Calgarians.

What do we mean by a ‘low carbon future’?

Our carbon footprint is reflective of the amount of greenhouse gases produced in our day-to-day lives through burning fossil fuels for electricity, heating and transportation. A low carbon future is about re-thinking how we consume items that require energy to produce. It’s about exploring how we engage renewable energy opportunities, adopting behaviors that make more efficient use of energy and consider the embedded energy costs associated with our food and water, and generally lowering our carbon footprint.

It’s also about taking action to ensure we maintain a high quality of life that protects our economic, social and environmental health as we work to reduce the carbon emissions that are related to our lifestyle.

Why are carbon levels important?

We know our consumption – that is the activities associated with how we build, heat and cool our homes, design our cities, acquire our food and how we get from place to place – is starting to change the environment we are living in. This Summit will create a set of pragmatic actions we need to do to enjoy a future that’s better than the one we have now.

The longer we wait before we start to take action on climate conditions, the less room we have to maneuver towards solutions that sustain our quality of life. We can continue the way we are going – history has shown that there are all types of species that can adapt to dramatic climate change. But the question remains – will we be one of them?

How do low carbon goals align with the imagineCALGARY Plan?

imagineCALGARY gave us the Target: by 2036, reduce Calgary’s ecological footprint to below the Canadian average of 7.25 hectares per capita. The Low Carbon Future Summit is designed to define the action that will get us there. The framework that emerges will chart out and articulate the pragmatic actions that could be taken by the community – business, institutions, government and communities – to ensure we achieve the Targets defined in imagineCALGARY without compromising our economic standing.

As an imagineCALGARY Partner, The City of Calgary is demonstrating leadership in taking action toward reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. By 2012, The City of Calgary will be the first major municipality in North America to have its operations entirely powered by renewable energy sources.

How did the Summit develop?

The Summit is a phased approach. Phase one started with a series of roundtables in May that included government, institutions, businesses and citizens. The goal was to find out what we needed to focus on to make a better future.

Through the work that was done during phase one, we realized that there was a strong sense and need to narrow our focus in one specific area. Energy became a recurring theme, and it makes sense: Energy makes up the largest part of our footprint.

Out of the roundtable discussions, a group of individuals emerged that helped to shape the second phase of the project – the Summit itself. This group – our Advisory Group – wanted to drive and shape a format for the Summit that would support an elevated level of thinking, and which would encompass representatives from business, institutions, energy companies and Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs). They have created a really interesting opportunity to advance innovative actions to reduce our energy footprint.

Phase three will integrate the actions that emerge from the Summit with the goals of the Community Greenhouse Gas Plan and the directions within the Calgary Accord from the World Energy Cities Partnership to implement strategies, actions and behaviors that will reduce our ecological footprint.

What is the focus of the Low Carbon Future Summit?

The Summit for Charting Calgary’s Low Carbon Future will develop a common narrative for Calgary that describes how to implement innovative initiatives that reduce the ecological footprint through community actions on energy. When we talk about sustainability, everyone has completely different views on things. One thing that makes this exciting is that it gives everyone, businesses and individuals alike, an opportunity to share their perspectives.

The Summit will inform the development of messages included in the Calgary Accord, which will be presented in early October as part of the World Energy Cities Partnership meetings held in Calgary.

Our goal for the Summit is to build on the extensive array of existing programs that target things like climate change, GHG emissions, eco footprint and sustainability to develop a high level roadmap of pragmatic actions that everyone will have a role in implementing.

The imagineCALGARY process was a really important step in providing a vision for where we want to go. What we are saying is ‘here’s the recipe for how to get there’.

The Summit will centre around two important pillars: innovation and implementation. The themes that emerged from the roundtables will be reviewed with a focus on innovative action – how do we elevate our current levels of thinking, action and behavior to achieve enhanced success? Summit participants will vote on the ideas that emerge from the Summit. Those ideas will be scored, and the most popular ones will be offered up for implementation discussions in the afternoon.

This has been a very enriched and informative process. The Advisory Group provided an additional level of guidance. We’re quite buoyed by the possibilities of what we can get out of the Summit for creating a cohesive, targeted and comprehensive community action plan.

Who should attend?

Everyone! The Summit is a public event and anyone who is interested in participating in a process that will help shape future community environmental action is encouraged to attend.

The Summit is designed to be open and transparent. The outcomes of this process are not pre-determined and will benefit from a variety of divergent opinions.

The needs of each community are reflected by the innovation and creativity of the people who want to make a difference. One of the unintended benefits of an event like the Summit is that it helps build citizenry. The richness of the results will reflect the diversity of the dialogue, and this is a reflection of the people who participate.

Besides attending the Summit, what can Calgarians do to support a low carbon future?

Become informed and take measured and targeted action.

Calculate your eco footprint and adopt behaviors that reduce consumption, increase energy efficiency and produce less waste.

The Summit is not intent on replacing the essential role individual actions plays in improving environmental quality. Everything from switching off the lights, buying local, taking part in community gardening, recycling, composting, making better use of transit, less use of vehicles – all have some kind of greenhouse gas effect. In fact, the Summit hopes to build on the remarkable legacy of these individual actions to define a framework that describes a high level set of actions that leverage the success of individual effort.

Once the results of the Summit process are made public, review them and take action on the initiatives defined in the framework. The Summit will provide a framework for coordinated action.

Can one person really make a difference?

Absolutely! The ultimate success of what emerges from this process is dependent on people taking action. What we want to help ensure is that the enthusiasm, dedication and time put into action is targeted and measured, and that it builds on the actions of others. There are people out there who are doing this already. It’s not about changing everything all at once. It’s about being informed enough to make the right choice at the right time.

Getting people to become aware of low carbon choices is important, and there are so many examples of it happening everywhere. People are starting to make the connection that some of the choices that we make have significant consequences. They see it’s starting to add up.

How is The City of Calgary supporting low carbon choices?

The City of Calgary is showing leadership in taking steps to reduce the eco footprint of its operations. We’ve already shown a marked decrease in per capita water consumption. We’ve harnessed wind power for transit, initiated a curbside recycling program and increased green construction and building practices.

The City’s Community Energy Initiative supports a range of activities intent on fostering sustainability – initiatives like the Community Footprint Program. This program provides citizens with resources, planning tools, networks and support to engage communities in actions that reduce their eco footprint. Community gardens, eco-fairs, recycling material exchanges, people augmenting pathway systems to encourage better use of bicycle travel – there are countless examples just in the past year of ways people in communities have been finding to reduce the eco footprint. One community bought as many subsidized rain barrels as it could, and then sold them at a cut rate to the community. We’re talking about people trying to be creative, and helping to find ways to make good, low carbon choices.

Our future prosperity depends on our ability to maintain economic progress within nature’s capacity to provide resources, by reducing consumption and increasing efficiency.

The City is here to convene, support and enable – but reducing Calgary’s ecological footprint is a challenge we all share. This is about not just looking around the room, and deciding who is going to do this.

This is about how we are going to write our own story together.

To learn more about the Low Carbon Future Summit, click here.