{"id":23582,"date":"2019-04-18T12:41:54","date_gmt":"2019-04-18T16:41:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=23582"},"modified":"2019-04-18T12:44:35","modified_gmt":"2019-04-18T16:44:35","slug":"community-energy-plan-targeted-for-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/community-energy-plan-targeted-for-2021\/","title":{"rendered":"Community Energy Plan targeted for 2021"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By\nBrock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Town-wide plan to look at ways to reduce\nenergy consumption, improve energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gasses is\nnow targeted for completion by 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Originally floated in 2017 through a\nmotion from the late Councillor John Abel, a Community Energy Plan was hoped to\nprovide the municipality, residents and businesses alike with a blueprint\ntowards greener living.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unanimously approved at the time, the\nmotion called on staff to prepare a budget for a Community Energy Plan intended\nto \u201csupport local development, foster behavioural change and a culture of\nconservation\u201d within Aurora.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Initial plans to bring the Community\nEnergy Plan (CEP) to fruition, however, were initially stymied by funding\nissues, but now that funding is back in place, Council learned last week that\nthe plan is back on track for completion in 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cStaff have prepared the Terms of\nReference for the CEP and secured Provincial and Federal funding under\nOntario\u2019s Municipal Energy Plan Program and Canada\u2019s Municipalities for Climate\nInnovation program,\u201d said Anca Mihail, Aurora\u2019s Manager of Engineering and\nCapital Delivery, in her report to Council. \u201cA CEP is a comprehensive long-term\nplan to improve energy efficiency, reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas\nemissions, foster green energy solutions, and support economic development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAurora\u2019s CEP will look at energy use\nacross the entire municipality and includes a municipality\u2019s residential,\ncommercial, industrial and public-sector energy use, including municipal\noperations and energy infrastructure. [It will] identify energy conservation\nand green energy opportunities for all sectors within the broader context of\nthe built environment, land use planning and growth; help to articulate\nmunicipal priorities for other energy planning initiatives, such as regional\nand provincial energy plans [and] include energy mapping to visually represent\nenergy intensity and conservation opportunities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ontario\u2019s Municipal Energy Plan provides\ngrants for the creation of CEPs for up to 50 per cent of the total project\u2019s\ncosts (up to $90,000) provided stakeholders have been engaged and the plan\napproved by Council. In addition, Ms. Mihail notes that a further $81,900 of\nfunding for the plan has been received from the Federation of Canadian\nMunicipalities and the Municipalities for Climate Innovation Program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stakeholder consultation is set to begin\nthis May, going through to the end of September.\nGathering baseline data and carrying out the energy mapping component of the\nplan is estimated to run between this October and the end of January 2020. The\ncreation of the plan and the formal approval of Council is estimated to take a\nyear \u2013 from February 1, 2020 through to the end of February 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The creation of the Community\nEnergy Plan, as well as an update towards the Town\u2019s Corporate Energy Plan,\nwhich looks at operations within Town-owned facilities, was warmly received by\nCouncil at the Committee Level last week. Greenlighting it there, it is up for\nformal ratification by Council this week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis has quite a\nhistory,\u201d said Councillor Wendy Gaertner. \u201cCouncillor Abel had a motion that\nthe Terms of Reference for the Community Energy Plan were to come to Council\nfor approval. After that, Council had a report from our Environment Manager\nthat basically said [what this report] said that the Terms of Reference had\nbeen prepared and, I think sent out. I brought it to Council\u2019s attention that\nCouncillor Abel actually had a motion to say the Terms of Reference had to come\nto Council. There\u2019s no reference to that in the report and I don\u2019t know if it\nwas part of the 2017 report. Anyway, at that time, we did decide that we\nwouldn\u2019t move forward with anything and we would wait until the funding came\nin. We still have a Council motion that said the Terms of Reference would come\nto Council and that hasn\u2019t happened. I have the same concern I had at least a\nyear ago that we never got to see the Terms of Reference.\u201d<\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Town-wide plan to look at ways to reduce energy consumption, improve energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gasses is now targeted for completion by 2021.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-68m","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-15 13:51:47","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23582\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}