MLAs ask for more details on P.E.I.'s net-zero climate action plan

The P.E.I. government has unveiled a plan that would see greenhouse gas emissions cut to net zero by 2040.

But there are questions surrounding how the province plans to meet some of its targets.

To meet the new goals, the agriculture sector would have to reduce emissions by between 35 and 50 per cent. Transportation emissions, by far the largest source of greenhouse gases, will need to drop by 55 to 65 per cent.

Emissions from homes and buildings would be cut by up to 95 per cent.

Those reductions would see P.E.I. reach net zero a decade ahead of the country's goal of 2050.

But some opposition MLAs want more clarity.

"We are concerned about the details and how long it may take those plans to roll out," Green MLA Hannah Bell said. 

"We've got a really short time frame. We're looking at eight years for the first set of really major targets, which is not a long time at all."

Bell said the government was also vague about where the money for some of the initiatives would come from.

"This ambitious work and necessary work is going to be expensive," she said. We've never shied away from that. But what we don't want to see is that cost being downloaded onto Islanders who can't afford it."

Some of the measures in the plan include further efforts to get non-fossil fuel heat sources installed in all homes and buildings by 2040, and in all government buildings by 2030.

On the agriculture front, the province would be looking to cut emissions from fertilizers as well as methane emissions from livestock by about a third in the next eight years, and to make more farmland able to capture and absorb carbon.

The province would also require car dealerships to sell only zero-emission vehicles by 2035. Investments in more public transit options in rural and urban P.E.I. will continue, in an effort to cut the number of vehicles per capita.

Liberal MLA Robert Henderson said the plan may be too optimistic, and that meeting the goals within the province's time frame would require a "real transformation" in infrastructure and logistics, particularly in agriculture and transportation.