FIRST TO KYOTO – CORPORATE GREENHOUSE GAS REDUCTION INITIATIVE – Kip Fullarton, Supervisor, Traffic Division, City of Fredericton

The City of Fredericton, New Brunswick’s Capital City, is situated along the banks of the beautiful St. John River, in the heart of the province. Fredericton is a great place to live, work and play. Graced with treelined streets, Victorian homes, top attractions, arts and cultural events, a variety of sporting facilities, kilometres of trails, acres of parks and green space, two universities, and an airport, Fredericton is one of the most successful and vibrant small cities in North America. Fredericton’s core population is 50,000. However, Fredericton's Census Agglomeration (CA) population is 81,355 – which encompasses the larger metropolitan area of Fredericton including surrounding unincorporated areas and New Maryland. This is an important consideration, as a significant portion of the City’s services and infrastructure, including roadways, road illumination and traffic lighting systems are put in place to account for the flow of our surrounding population into and out of the core City area for work and recreational activities. The City of Fredericton is a large operation, which can best be described as not just one organization, but as many businesses working under one umbrella. The municipality employs 630 people and provides over 150 services to its citizens. The City as a corporate entity has celebrated many achievements. In 2000, the City’s commitment to pollution prevention was evidenced when it joined the Partners for Climate Protection (PCP) program of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM). Also in 2000, the City was a finalist in the Energy Efficiency Canada Awards’, sponsored by Natural Resources Canada. And in 2004 the City of Fredericton became the first city in Canada and one of only a few in North America to achieve ISO 9001:2000 certification for its entire corporation. The year 2006 was a very significant year for the City’s environmental initiatives and commitment; the City was awarded the prestigious Greenhouse Gas Reduction Award by the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment (CCME), as part of the CCME’s Pollution Prevention Awards. As a result of this award, Fredericton was named an Environment Canada Pollution Prevention Success Story for its corporate pollution prevention initiatives, and featured on their website as well as in their on-line magazine Envirozine. Furthermore, the City completed an inventory and measurement of its greenhouse gas emissions as a corporate entity, and submitted these results and a Corporate Action Plan to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities & Partners for Climate Protection. The GHG emissions results, goals and action plan were approved by FCM & PCP, and the City is now continuing to aggressively reduce GHGs to meet its goal of a 20 percent reduction by 2010, over 2000 levels, consistent with Kyoto Protocol targets. Thus far in 2007, the City is embarking on a large community engagement process aimed at a citywide/community GHG reduction initiative. This public campaign is called “Green Matters” – and its goal is to reduce community GHG emissions by 6 percent by 2010, over 2000 levels. This campaign is just getting underway, and both corporate and community GHG emissions will continue to be monitored and tracked each year leading up to the 2010 target year, in order to track progress and adjust initiatives and campaigns based on emissions results by sector.