Summary
The City of Charlottetown’s Community Greenhouse Gas Inventory is an estimate of energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions attributable to the entire Charlottetown community.
The inventory is updated each year with data from the previous year as some information doesn’t become available until midway through the following year. The scope of the report includes electricity and fuel consumption for the residential, commercial, industrial, and transportation sectors as well as emissions from solid waste, and agriculture. Energy and emissions are presented in total energy consumption (GJ), total GHG emissions (tCO2e), and energy expenditures ($).
Key Takeaways
- The community emissions for 2024 are 33% higher than the target emissions for that year. Continued improvements to homes, businesses and transportation will be required each year to meet the ambitions milestone targets that have been set.
- Overall, the annual GHG emissions of the community have decreased by 7% from the 2015 baseline year. This decrease can largely be attributed to decreases in electricity and heating fuel emissions.
- Transportation fuels such as gasoline, diesel, and aviation fuel have all increased since 2015. The Transportation category is the largest source of emissions and accounts for more than 54% of the total community emissions. Converting vehicles to electric and improvements to active transportation will help to lower the transportation emissions in the community.
- Although the overall electricity usage has increased since 2015, the emissions factor for electricity has decreased, making it a cleaner energy source.
- Residential and commercial buildings can lower their emissions by improving insulation levels, installing heat pumps, and installing solar panels where possible. Before you do any projects to your house or building, it is important to make sure you aren’t wasting energy with little things such as leaving lights on when not needed.
Methodology
The City of Charlottetown’s GHG inventory closely follows the Global Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Inventories. Where available, bulk energy usage numbers for the city were collected. Where this information wasn’t available, numbers are based on scaling down provincial or regional data available from the provincial or federal government. If you would like more information about the inventory and methodology used, please contact [email protected].