City of Regina commits to 100 per cent renewables by 2050

The City of Regina will soon be making a push to be cleaner and greener.

City council approved a motion Monday night to get the city using 100 per cent renewable energy by 2050.

The goal means anything run by the city would be run on renewables.

“It’s a lot of work to be done and when you think about it, it’s a very lofty goal – to be 100 per cent renewable,” Mayor Michael Fougere said.

The first step will be for city administration to come back at the end of next year with a report laying out a strategy on how to achieve the goal.

Fougere said it would involve using Regina’s natural advantages, like wind and abundant sunlight for solar power. He said the plan would also include some things council’s already been discussing, such as switching Regina Transit to electric buses.

SaskPower’s goal is to have half the province’s energy production coming from renewables by 2030.

Fougere said the city will have to work with SaskPower to meet its goal.

“They certainly have a monopoly on energy so we’d have to talk to them about how they’d be part of the solution on this issue.”

The motion has been in the works for a while. Fougere explained three councilors – Andrew Stevens, John Findura and Joel Murray – went to a conference in British Columbia last year which featured discussions about renewable energy. They brought forward the motion to council.

“(They) came back with some good approaches and good ideas and we talked about it as a council, sort of informally, and said: ‘let’s move forward on this,'” Fougere said.

Fougere didn’t know the exact percentage of the city’s energy use currently coming from renewables, but said he knows there’s a long way to go.

“Our economy is based upon petroleum, so to move away from that is going to be a monumental shift, and that’s why 2050 is a reachable goal because it’s going to take a long time to do that.”