Data suggests city greener than Canadian average
Report summary indicates Yellowknifers emitted nearly half as much
as national average
Shane Magee
Northern News Services
Friday, May 22, 2015
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Data compiled for a city energy usage report indicates residents use about 40 per cent less energy per person than their southern counterparts because of short commutes and smaller homes.
The city finished an energy-use inventory in April which calculated how much carbon dioxide is emitted on average by residents.
According to the city's summary of the report, residents emitted 214,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide, or 11.1 tonnes per person in 2013. That's nearly half the Canadian average of 20.6 tonnes per person.
"We found that our very short commutes and traditionally smaller than average homes made our community perform better on many of the indicators used to measure greenhouse gas emissions," stated Coun. Dan Wong, chairman of the community energy planning committee.
An overview of the data was presented by Remi Gervais, the city's community energy management specialist, during the Solid Waste Forum held April 21 in council chambers.
Several methods were used by a consultant company to calculate the figure, Gervais told Yellowknifer.
The data for energy use was calculated using information the city has on file for the size of each building and the age of the building.
For transportation, they assigned a number of inhabitants to residential buildings and a number of jobs per commercial building.
They used this data along with a calculation to factor in commutes within the city in order to come up with greenhouse gas emissions related to transportation.
The consultant then ran an analysis between the points to examine how much commuting was done between homes and job sites.
They used several methods to validate the data, Gervais said, including by checking the number of registered vehicles in Yellowknife.
"We used a few sources to make sure that each sector was properly measured and make sure we weren't too far off the reality," Gervais said.
The full report was to be released to the public at an energy committee meeting yesterday in the downstairs city hall boardroom.
