The County declared a Climate Emergency on June 18, 2019 — my birthday!  In February 2024, almost five years later, I joined the County’s Climate Action Plan Working Group, which was  tasked with estimating the County’s greenhouse gas emissions. 

One year later, community outreach is underway to raise awareness, gather input and encourage collective action towards sustainability.

We chose 2019 as the baseline year. The idea is we can then work to track and gradually reduce emissions. GHGs come from burning fossilized carbon — converting ancient, stored sunlight to meet today’s energy needs. 

The real task is to reduce our use of energy derived from fossil fuels. We need to burn less of it.

The Working Group has looked at three major areas:  buildings, transportation and agriculture. This editorial is based on our deep dive on buildings, the energy we need to keep them warm in the winter, cool in the summer, well-lit and running smoothly.

Factoring in seasonal (17 percent) and full-time residences and businesses, Prince Edward County has 12,180 ‘GHG-equivalent’ households. Using data from Hydro One and Enbridge, as well as MPAC and the Watson Reports of 2018 and 2022, we were able to come to the following energy findings.

1) The total energy use for buildings in the County is 735 GWh per year, split almost exactly between residential and commercial / industrial (a GWh is a million kWh).

2) The amount per household is 30 MWh per year (a MWh is a thousand kWh). To put this in perspective, the average person consumes about 2,500 kilocalories per day in our food, equivalent to 1 MWh a year or 2.5 MWh for afamily of 2.5. In other words, it takes 12 times more to energize our houses than to keep our bodies and souls together. 

3) The fuel split for heating is: methane (natural gas), 37 percent, propane, 25 percent, heating oil, 18 percent, electricity, 13 percent and wood, 8 percent. 80 percent of our heating is from fossil fuels.

4) The overall usage split is: space heating, 65 percent, water heating, 20 percent, appliances, 10 percent, space cooling, 3 percent, and lighting, 2 percent. Assuming electricity is 25 percent fossil generated that makes 85 percent for heating and 65 percent for other uses from fossil fuels.

I think everyone understands our transportation sector is heavily dependent on burning oil but it may come as a surprise that our buildings are so dependent on fossil fuels, too. And while our vehicle fleet can be changed (for example to electric) in around 15 years, our housing stock takes longer. Houses are with us for 75 years or more and are difficult to retrofit to use less energy.

So could we do without fossil fuels? Many people in the County used to burn wood for heating; wood grows sustainably so is considered a “green” fuel.

In 2016 my wife and I were pleased to host Margaret, who had lived in our farmhouse, as a child, in the 1950s. She told us our two front rooms were used for storing wood. The house had two families,  each using a wood stove. There was no indoor plumbing and Margaret remembered taking a bowl of cold water to the woodshed for a sponge bath before school. The kids slept barracks-style in a long, low, attic room that had snow on the floor many mornings. But she remembers a very happy childhood. Electricity had arrived and they had a TV and fridge. And a Ford car! But you can see from the above numbers her family’s use of fossil fuel would have been around a tenth of what it is, today.

Fossil fuels have changed the way we live, bringing us comfort and convenience but not (at least in the County) survival, nor, necessarily, happiness.

And what of the future? The County’s building pipeline has an additional 8,763 households at various stages of approval. If all proceed using current building standards they will increase residential energy demand by 73 percent. More sober estimates are for 1,650 households by 2035 and 4,400 by 2055. But whatever the number, unless we make changes to how our houses are built, they will add to our energy need and emit more GHGs.

A very bright light is our new hospital build. It has full geothermal for all heating and cooling: today’s level of comfort and convenience with Margaret’s level of fossil fuels.

In principle, there is no reason why all new, large developments in the County cannot do the same. The Gazette reported last year that the Cold Creek development has “told Enbridge there will be no gas in this subdivision.”

But why leave it to individual developers to make this decision? Forward-thinking municipalities such as East Gwiliambury have adopted “green” building standards. Its Official Plan has been praised for productive consultations with the public, developers and other stakeholders.

If we are serious about reducing our GHG emissions and recognizing that what we build today will be with us for generations, it is essential that all new, large-scale construction in the County be built not to rely on fossil fuels. The province is doing its part by investing in more electricity. We need to do our part by planning for less fossil fuel.