One Pager on Zero Carbon Step Code - the rationale to adopt as early as possible

Edited One-pager April 14, 2023

View Royal unanimously declared a Climate Emergency in 2019.
View Royal Council unanimously endorsed the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty on February 7, 2023.
View Royal is surrounded by neighbours who already have bylaws in place for electrifying buildings. Only View Royal and Langford are the outliers.
Our Community Climate Action Strategy informs us VR wants to prioritize a low carbon approach (heat pumps), as it is of most importance that we get started now implementing the BIG MOVES! Every gas hookup potentially locks a building into another 20+ years of GHG emissions and we will not reach our targets.
Step Codes measure a building’s “efficiency” only.
The Zero Carbon Step Code measures the “GHG emissions”
View Royal is already at Step Code 3 so it should not be difficult to add on the Zero Carbon Step Code component.
To quote Maya Angelou, “When we know better we do better.” We know that electric heat pumps keep people comfortably warm in the winter and cool homes in the summer as well as filter out harmful air pollutants. In the heat dome of 2021, 619 people died. We need to have View Royal’s residents’ best interests at heart when building new homes so they can live in safe, healthy, and resilient homes in dignity and equity.
Let’s build in a fail-safe system now with electric heat pumps that reduce both energy costs and GHG emissions. We have the tools to accomplish this now!

Link to Google Doc regarding City of Victoria’s motion and the time markers for the council video recording: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LkTpm5_743kzGfGY8n2wKW7xvmwDlPcejN4zZsRUdqU/edit?usp=sharing