The BC government wants you! …To fill out a survey commenting on the CleanBC climate plan.
The government has appointed two climate policy experts to conduct a review of CleanBC, and it’s time to make your voice heard.
There’s a lot to be said about BC’s climate plan. Initially launched in 2018, CleanBC is a strategy aimed at achieving the Province’s legislated climate target of reducing emissions by 40% by 2030. The province has missed every climate target it has set since the first ones set in 2007, and earlier this year, the government finally admitted that we are not on track to meet the new targets it set for 2025 and 2030.
You don’t need to be an expert to fill out this survey. It may seem like a lot of information, but we have your back. We’ll take you through the survey and suggest at least one thing that you could say about each of the topics. You can, of course, say more – or say something different – but we encourage you to say at least something.
In answering the survey, please keep in mind the reality that in 2021 climate change killed over 600 BC residents, burned down the Village of Lytton and flooded Abbotsford and Merritt. Each additional tonne of carbon dioxide, methane or other “greenhouse gases” that enters the atmosphere make us a little less safe. It is important that we make it clear to the government in this survey that more needs to be done.
How to participate in the review of CleanBC
British Columbians are encouraged to provide input by filling out the CleanBC survey by August 1, 2025.
Click here to open the survey in a different window
After a couple of questions about your familiarity with CleanBC, you will be asked to indicate which aspects of the CleanBC plan you want to make comments about: Buildings, Clean Energy/Utilities, Transportation, Industry, Accountability, or All of the Above.
If you do not select any of them, you get taken straight through to questions about your general goals for the CleanBC plan. For maximum impact, select All of the Above, although the survey will then take longer. If you’re pressed for time, feel free to pick the topics that interest you most.
The survey will ask you to rank how effective you think various measures contained in CleanBC have been. Surprisingly, it is only if you answer that a measure is “somewhat ineffective” or “ineffective” that you are invited to provide more details about “what is missing or needs improvement for them to work properly.” This unfortunate feature of the survey means that even if you somewhat support a measure, you will need to indicate that it is somewhat ineffective to give specific feedback about it.
Buildings
According to the Province, about 19% of BC’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions come from buildings. BC has pledged to reduce GHG emissions from buildings by 59-64% relative to 2007 levels by 2030, but so far has reduced emissions by just 6%.
This is by far the most ambitious of BC’s targets, both because the quantity of reductions is large, and because many of the emissions come from existing buildings, which can be expensive to “retrofit” to reduce emissions. But the technologies to dramatically reduce emissions from buildings, by switching from fossil fuel heating to electrical heat pumps and increasing insulation for example, are well known, and achieving this target is largely a matter of political will and financial resources.
For this topic, our recommended feedback is on the Better Homes, Better Buildings Program. This program is BC’s primary tool for retrofitting existing buildings (Better Homes refers to residential buildings, while Better Buildings is focused on commercial buildings). This is mainly achieved through rebates on measures to retrofit buildings – paying a portion of the cost for homeowners and businesses to put in insulation, install heat pumps, solar cells and other technology that reduce emissions. Homeowners and businesses also benefit individually from the energy savings these retrofits bring.
However:
- These approaches favour people and businesses that own property, providing little in the way of benefits to renters or low-income individuals; and
- The incentives provided to date are not sufficient to meet the targets BC has set for reducing emissions from buildings.
If you click “somewhat ineffective” next to Better Homes, Better Buildings, you will be asked “what is missing or needs improvement.” Tell them that Better Homes, Better Buildings needs more tools to upgrade existing buildings, in line with the scale of retrofits required to meet BC’s building targets.
Solutions could include developing a Climate Youth Corps to provide jobs in retrofitting buildings at low cost; Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing, which allows loans for clean energy upgrades to be registered against the property; and building a heat pump manufacturing industry in BC (and creating jobs in the process).
For new buildings, BC could also move more quickly in on implementing its Zero Carbon Step Code changes to the Building Code, and to aim to make new buildings net zero, rather than “net zero ready” before 2032.
Clean Energy/Utilities
The next section is on “clean energy,” but assumes that gas utilities are part of achieving BC’s climate targets. Gas is a fossil fuel, primarily the greenhouse gas methane, and adds to global climate pollution when it is burned or escapes.
If the choice was between heating with coal and heating with gas, there might be an argument that gas is cleaner (although the jury is still out). But the reality is that gas utilities in BC are competing with hydroelectric power, which has a much, much lower carbon footprint.
The survey asks about gas utility policies and regulations related to renewable natural gas (RNG). Renewable natural gas is methane produced from rotting organic waste and it could be part of the climate solution – if created and used strategically to displace emissions from aviation or other hard-to-replace uses of fossil fuels. But BC’s gas utilities (primarily FortisBC) are instead using RNG in home heating, where easy electrical alternatives exist, advertising it as a reason that homeowners do not need to move away from gas.
We encourage you to answer questions regarding gas utilities with “not effective at all” and explain that we need to move away from natural gas, and use RNG strategically to address sources of GHG emissions that cannot be easily addressed with existing technology.
Transportation
Transportation is BC’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions (42%), and emissions from BC’s transportation sector have increased by 18% since 2007 (as of 2022). So clearly the CleanBC policies have not, to date, been effective in reducing emissions.
Part of the problem is that BC has focused on incrementally increasing the number of Zero Emissions Vehicles (especially electric cars) sold in BC through a combination of subsidies and auto industry targets (the Go Electric and Zero Emissions Vehicles Sales Targets programs mentioned in the survey) but has failed to address the emissions from the freight sector.
As the BC government’s 2024 Climate Accountability Report recently explained:
Commercial on-road transport (primarily heavy-duty vehicles) made the largest contribution with a 21% increase while emissions from personal on-road transport stayed essentially flat. Even though the number of personal vehicles rose, the impacts were offset by people driving less and choosing cleaner vehicles.
In 2008 the BC Climate Action Team, experts appointed by the BC government, recommended taking steps to increase the use of trains to move freight as well as requiring increased efficiency of heavy-duty vehicles. These recommendations, or similar recommendations made by others, have not been implemented.
Contrary to popular belief, gas taxes come nowhere close to paying for BC roads, with the Province spending over $1000 per capita on roads (compared to $215 per capita on public transit). While tolls for individual drivers are likely to be politically challenging (despite the effectiveness of congestion pricing), a fee on commercial freight, perhaps with lower rates for cleaner vehicles, might be a source of funding for expanding rail options or increasing public transit.
You may also want to indicate your support for Active Transportation and Public Transit, and similar programs aimed at getting people out of cars.
Industry
Industry is responsible for 39% of the province’s greenhouse gas emissions, but over half of that is from the oil and gas industry. This figure doesn’t capture the full role of the oil and gas industry, since it doesn’t include the emissions when their products are burned (much of it not in BC).
The first program that the survey asks about in this section is “industrial carbon pricing.” Until recently, a key feature of the CleanBC plan was consumer carbon pricing. BC’s so-called carbon tax in 2024/25 was $80/tonne of carbon dioxide generated by burning fossil fuels, far lower than the economic harm caused by a tonne of carbon dioxide (estimated at $271/tonne in 2025). However, the government, without reviewing its effectiveness or how to make up the lost emission reductions, eliminated the consumer carbon tax, while promising it would ensure “big polluters pay their fair share.”
While industry is still subject to the Output-Based Pricing System (OBPS), this charge is only levied if a business exceeds an “emission limit” based on each industry’s average emissions (but reducing over time). Even then, the company may be able to purchase other, cheaper, “compliance units” (offsets or credits).
This system was not designed to make sure that industry pays its “fair share” of either the damage caused by those emissions or of what BC needs to spend to address climate change.
The oil and gas industry, in particular, should pay its fair share for the climate harm suffered in BC. When it comes to other issues like recycling, BC has been on the forefront of “extended producer responsibility,” requiring producers to “take full responsibility for the lifecycle of their products.” And with the elimination of the consumer carbon tax, and climate costs falling to BC taxpayers, it is more important than ever that the producers of fossil fuels take responsibility for the waste from their products.
Accountability
The first questions in the Accountability portion of the survey relate to the adequacy of BC’s climate targets. All of the targets fall short of BC’s responsibility to look after it’s pollution.
Because BC has so far taken inadequate action (and counter-productive action) in reducing its emissions, it is near impossible to achieve BC’s 2025 target (16% by 2025), and challenging to achieve the 2030 target. However, it’s certainly an option to call for stronger targets in 2040 and 2050, as well as to strengthen (especially) the oil and gas sectoral target for 2030.
In relation to the 2050 target, the survey also asks how a 2050 net-zero target might relate to the existing 2050 target. In our view it is very important that the Province keep a target for actual reductions, even if it also introduces a “net zero” target. The current 2050 target of 80% reductions is about reducing actual GHG emissions, while net zero goals are about balancing the emissions in 2050 with carbon dioxide absorbed by forests, estuaries and other natural “sinks” or through technological negative emissions technologies. If the government does away with a commitment to actual emissions reductions, and relies exclusively on a “net zero” target, this risks weakening climate action.
The Survey also asks whether “BC's public reporting of CleanBC policies and programs is clear and thorough,” a question which has a lot packed into it. It was only this year that the government acknowledged it would not achieve the 2025 target, and currently the government is only required to report on the (estimated) emissions for the current year and two years following. In addition, there is no independent oversight auditing of the government’s progress, as there is under similar legislation in the UK.
Other action
One of the last questions in the survey is about what other jurisdictions are doing to reduce emissions or support clean energy. Despite being limited to “other jurisdictions,” this seems to be your only opportunity to share ideas not currently in CleanBC, and I’d encourage you to go broad. However, some initiatives from other jurisdictions that you might mention include:
- Quebec, California and various other jurisdictions have joined the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance, pledging to work together to phase out oil and gas production. BC needs to join.
- Several US States and local governments are suing global fossil fuel companies for the costs of climate change that they are experiencing, and BC should do the same. (See our Sue Big Oil campaign for information on a similar movement here in BC).
- BC needs to revamp our management of the carbon in wetlands and estuaries (blue carbon) and in old growth forests to better store carbon (while protecting other environmental values).
Conclusion
After all of this, you’ll be invited to provide some information about where you are in the province and other demographic information, and … you’re done.
With increasing pressure for development now, and to hell with our future, the BC government needs to hear that British Columbians want more, not less, climate action. So please take a moment to tell your government what you think.