The first comprehensive analysis of greenhouse gas emissions in the County came to Shire Hall earlier this month.

Angus Ross and Don Wilford presented the report to the Committee of the Whole on February 12th, and advocated for key strategies to mitigate and adapt to climate change. 

“What we are seeing now is a global threat. The global timeline for temperature increase has changed,” said Mr. Ross. 

In 2015, Canada entered the Paris Agreement, and committed to shifting from GHG-emitting fossil fuels in order to keep warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels. 

“We’ve already hit that and we will plausibly see a two-degree celsius rise above pre-industrial levels within the next 10 to 15 years, and that has enormous impacts,” Mr. Ross noted.

“Fossil fuels still account for roughly three-quarters of Canada’s total primary energy consumption, a share that has declined only slowly since 2000,” the report states.

Taking 2019 as a baseline year, the report gathers data from Hydro One, Enbridge, MPAC, the Ontario Ministry of Transportation, and Statistics Canada. It breaks down the County’s GHG emissions into four primary sectors: buildings, transportation, agriculture, and solid waste.

Without mitigation, projected population growth will exacerbate GHG emissions from construction and transportation, already the two biggest contributors, said Mr. Wilford.

“If you build 1000 homes and use traditional building methods, for every 1000 homes you’re going to increase greenhouse gas emissions by 3.7 kilotonnes and you’re going to need 12 gigawatt hours of electricity,” Mr. Wilford said. 

There was no detailed data on the County’s biggest emitter: Heidelberg Materials.
The cement plant produces more than twice the combined amount
of community emissions every year. 
Heidelberg is regulated by the upper levels of government
and falls out of municipal jurisdiction. 

Electricity is Key

Electrifying heating and cooling systems and robust adoption of EV could whittle that number down to 0.4 kilotonnes of GHG per 1000 homes. 

“If new development was green and did not produce greenhouse gasses, then that would be the good thing to do because the easiest emissions to reduce are the ones that you don’t produce in the first place,” Mr. Wilford added.

Reliable data on some energy sources, such as propane, heating oil, heat pumps, and geothermal is absent. 

Mr. Wilford explained that, “this data is very very hard to capture,” because it is not provincially mandated. 

Likewise, Mr. Angus noted that there is no available data on annual fuel sales in the County, which could indicate how much tourism contributes to emissions. 

“We know that we get a million visitors a year coming in. We don’t know how much fuel they purchase,” Mr. Angus said. “Fuel sales are a real indicator of GHGs that are being emitted in the County.”

Mr. Wilford noted positively that because farmers have adopted low emission practices, there is “limited opportunity to do better on agriculture.”

“All nitrogen fertilizer is coated to prevent nitrogen emissions,” he said. “That’s a big deal.”

There was no detailed data on the County’s biggest emitter: Heidelberg Materials. The cement plant produces more than twice the combined amount of community emissions every year. Heidelberg is regulated by the upper levels of government and falls out of municipal jurisdiction. 

Heidelberg has committed to reducing its carbon emissions in Picton by 25 to 30 percent by 2030, in line with low carbon practices at its plants around the world. 

About 98 percent of the fuel used at Heidelberg’s UK plant is low-carbon. In Germany they have started converting sewage sludge into low carbon fuel. 

“They’ve got a plant in Edmonton that has dramatically reduced their GHGs and all of what they’ve learned in the others they want to bring here,” noted Mr. Wilford. 

Climate Impacts

The impacts of climate change are already here, Mr. Angus and Mr. Wilford noted, but will worsen if emissions continue at the current levels. 

Longer droughts, an increase in vector-born diseases, and prolonged periods of extreme heat are in the offing. The drought of 2025 was a sign of what’s to come.

Insurance premiums increase every year with the rise in damage, to be paid by municipalities and residents. 

Mr. Ross, who worked in insurance for 60 years, said providers calculate costs by “mapping peril by peril: flood, hail, wild fire; they overlay the maps and an additional charge goes with each.”

“When I started in the industry and for decades afterwards, the major peril was fire,” he said. “It’s now water.”

Their primary recommendation was to create a mitigation and adaptation framework, accompanied by policy direction in the Official Plan. The framework must include emission reduction targets and implementation timelines. 

It also recommends introducing a climate lens to all staff reports, projects, and budgets to assess the climate impacts of every municipal initiative. 

The report encourages the municipality to coordinate nationally with the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, and locally with conservation authorities and Southeast Public Health. 

Finally, it proposes integrating development planning with energy planning. “Emmissions and energy go together,” Mr. Wilford said. 

The detailed data in the report was lauded by Council as a guiding document for setting attainable goals.

“We now have a baseline of emission statistics, so that three years from now, five years from now, ten years from now, we can re-measure and see where we’re at,” said Councillor John Hirsch. 

“You’ve changed my mind on a number of things, simply because you’ve produced the facts, the data,” Councillor Phil St-Jean noted.