Nearly a year after its Path to Net Zero, the Manitoba government has finally released its first three-year Action Plan.
Unfortunately, it lacks the detail and specificity needed to ensure meaningful and measurable GHG reductions. It fails to provide specific emissions targets, modelling, or concrete steps to rapidly reduce emissions from sectors including agriculture, transportation, and buildings.
Instead, the plan primarily restates policies and funding already announced, and in several instances takes credit for federal government funding and even initiatives from the previous government. The former government’s Climate and Green Plan, released in 2017, included considerably more detail and rigour, despite also lacking ambition.
You cannot have a climate plan without a target. We need to see ambitious emissions reduction targets passed in legislation this fall.
Despite the majority of the commitments in the plan being made a year or more ago, today’s document does not provide any details on what progress has been made. It also does not include mechanisms for accountability and transparency going forward, such as how and when progress will be reported.
While we are pleased to see the Province’s support for a new district geothermal system in south Winnipeg, there is a notable lack of district geothermal at scale in the three-year action plan. The province needs to follow through on its previous commitments and establish a public utility or entity to manage district geothermal infrastructure, like it has for fossil gas infrastructure, in order to move beyond one-off projects to widespread adoption. It also needs to consider developing a ban on fossil gas hook-ups in all new developments.
The inadequacy of today’s climate plan stands stark against the record-breaking storms and extreme weather of this summer, and against this same government’s continued advocacy for expanding fossil fuel exports through Churchill. If the provincial government wants to claim any climate credibility heading into next year’s election, they need to decisively move from commitments to action, scale up their ambition, and report measurable progress.
This plan is not nearly sufficient.