GCC Communiqué: SMARTTool Pilot

The Province, UBCM and local governments have demonstrated their shared commitment to address global warming by signing onto the British Columbia Climate Action Charter and to date 179 local governments have signed on. The Joint Provincial–UBCM Green Communities Committee (GCC), established under the Charter, is continuing to work to ensure local governments have the right tools and supports to implement their Charter commitments.

As signatories to the Charter, local governments commit to the goal of becoming carbon neutral in their corporate operations by 2012. To assist local governments in becoming carbon neutral, the GCC recently approved a piloting of SMARTTool with a limited number of local governments to see if and how it will meet the needs of local governments to measure corporate greenhouse gas emissions.  

Developed by the Province of BC, SMARTTool is a web based carbon reporting tool which provides a standardized approach to calculating and reporting an organization’s greenhouse gas emissions. 

The SMARTTool Pilot is scheduled to take approximately six months (May–October 2010).  The Pilot is intended to assess if SMARTTool is the right tool to meet the need for Climate Action Charter signatories to measure corporate greenhouse gas emissions in an efficient, cost effective and consistent manner.  The Pilot will also determine how SMARTTool compares to other tools in use by local governments to measure their corporate emissions.

The objectives of the pilot project are to:

1. Assess the suitability of SMARTTool for use by local governments.
2. Assess if existing data recording systems being used by local governments, such as spreadsheets, can “roll up” into SMARTTool.
3. Determine if SMARTTool can facilitate single data entry for multiple purposes.  For example, can data be entered once and generate reports for different purposes such as calculating the corporate footprint of a local government and also a Climate Action Revenue Incentive Program (CARIP) report.
4. Ascertain the cost to deliver SMARTTool to local governments in the future.

Twenty local governments, representing a range in size and geographic location, have been invited to participate in the Pilot (see list below).  Two orientation sessions have been held to provide the opportunity for local governments who are participating in the pilot to preview SMARTTool, talk about their experiences using the Carbon Neutral workbook, and discuss other elements of the Climate Action Charter commitment.

The response to the orientation sessions has been positive and the local government participants are starting to work with the SMARTTool staff to capture the necessary emissions data to be entered into SMARTTool.

The GCC will provide a status report on the SMARTTool Pilot at UBCM Convention in September.

Local governments invited to participate in the SMARTTool Pilot:

1. Northern Rockies Regional District

2. Regional District of Central Kootenay

3. Capital Regional District

4. Metro Vancouver

5. Sparwood

6. Tofino

7. Bowen Island

8. Granisle

9. Smithers

10. Prince George

11. Kamloops

12. Comox

13. Squamish

14. Whistler

15. Sechelt

16. Saanich

17. City of North Vancouver

18. City of Vancouver

19. Surrey

20. Victoria

Contact:
For further information on the SMARTTool Pilot please contact:
Ben Finkelstein
Climate Action Secretariat, Ministry of Environment
Manager, Green Communities
Ben.Finkelstein@gov.bc.ca