BIOMASS ‘Don’t wait for the government’ CANADIAN Volume 18 No. 4 Editor -Maria Church (226) 931-1396 [email protected] Associate Editor -Tamar Atik (416) 510-5211 [email protected] Swedish city sets a high green bar for Canadian municipalities ayor Anna Tenje of Vaxjo, Swe-den, is enormously proud of her city. She lovingly describes sleek wooden apartments built alongside spar-kling blue lakes and lush green forests in the municipality of 92,000. But it wasn’t always this way. In the 1970s the Swedish city underwent a res-toration of its central lakes, and in 1996, Vaxjo became the first city in the world to mandate a fossil-fuel free future by 2030. To reach its ambitious goal, the city uses bioenergy via a wood-fu-elled CHP district energy system that supplies 90 per cent of the heating demand, as well as municipal waste biogas plants and small-scale hydro, solar and wind installations. City buses run on biofuel, and smart urban planning encourages bicycle commuting. For years the community has desig-nated itself Europe’s greenest city, and in 2017 the EU Commission validated their claim with the European Green Leaf Award 2018. Since the 1996 decision, Vaxjo has re-duced emissions by 58 per cent and im-proved economic growth by 32 per cent. “We have shown that this is possible,” Tenje told an audience of hundreds in Prince George. Tenje gave a keynote ad-dress at the Canadian Bioeconomy Con-ference and Exhibition in early June, and I had the pleasure of being in the audience for her talk. (Read coverage of the confer-ence on page 7.) Her most poignant advice for the crowd: “Don’t wait for the national legis-lation; it won’t come for years.” Effective change, she said, begins not at a federal or even international level, but in the cities Contributors -Alyssa Dalton, Pat Liew, and Gordon Murray. 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No liability is assumed for errors or omissions. All advertising is subject to the publisher’s approval. Such approval does not imply any endorsement of the products or services advertised. Publisher reserves the right to refuse advertising that does not meet the standards of the publication. M and municipalities around the world. “I would like to see more communities take the chance,” Tenje said. I could almost feel the head nods around me; particularly from host city Mayor Lyn Hall, who has long been an advocate for the bioeconomy in Prince George. The city boasts a wood-based district energy system that connects 11 downtown buildings, while the Prince George campus of the Uni-versity of Northern B.C. has a biomass gasification plant. Unfortunately, Tenje’s message was preached to the choir. The conference room was packed, but at-tendees more often than not were industry insiders or politicians already on board to support the bioeconomy. It’s a message that all Ca-nadian municipalities large and small should hear: When it comes to the environment, don’t wait for govern-ment. Economic prosperity and clean en-ergy can go hand in hand; Vaxjo and Prince George both prove that it’s possible. But there’s a lesson in there for the bio-industry as well. Continue making pitches to municipal governments. Don’t wait for Ottawa or your province to fur-ther incentivise your project. Funding programs come and go (they are very much ‘going’ in Ontario courtesy of the new provincial government) but as the changing climate continues to put pres-sure on all municipalities around the world, the right solution will make sense to a growing number of cities, towns and rural and remote communities. • www.canadianbiomassmagazine.ca 4 Canadian BIOMASS FEBRUARY 2016
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