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At a special council meeting on Tuesday, February 25, Oakville Town Council voted unanimously in favour of Oakville’s Community Energy Plan to be accepted.

“The plan is one we can embrace and I believe it will help us face the challenges ahead of us to do better, and this is the most important thing, better than we have been doing so far, which is not nearly good enough,” said Mayor Rob Burton preceding the vote.

The Community Energy Plan, which is a collaboration between the Town, Sheridan College and the Oakville Energy Task Force, sets a community energy vision and community goals for the energy efficiency, emissions reduction and energy relation economic savings for 2041.

“Our community is justly famous for the degree of engagement that we have with each other, but our community engagement is reaching new heights with this, to reach such consensus in so varied a group of residents and businesses, and it’s only with this kind of cooperation, coordination and group vision that we’re going to make any progress against this,” said Mayor Burton.

The report sought the plan’s strategy and priority projects be endorsed, that a financial contribution of $100,000 in 2020 be made by Council in support of the Oakville Energy Task Force’s Implementation Management Office, that Council authorize an extension of the Memorandum of Understanding between Sheridan College and the Town of Oakville to September 2020, that staff be directed to review options to implement a specific tax levy to support dedicated funding for climate change initiatives in the Town of Oakville as part of the 2021 budget process and that staff report to Council on how the Plan aligns with national and international greenhouse gas reduction goals.

The Community Energy Plan Strategy establishes 12 evidence-based priority projects for 2020 to 2025 that put the community on the path for achieving its 2041 goals. Implementation of the Strategy will be managed by a new, not-for-profit entity, tentatively called the Implementation Management Office, which will be governed by the Oakville Energy Task Force and Board of Directors.

The Plan follows 15 years of action taken by the Town of Oakville on climate change and leading by example to implement climate change policies, plans and initiatives that reduce corporate and community greenhouse gas emissions and building awareness in the community of the solutions and opportunities available.