Mayor's Report - May 2009

In March the Metro Vancouver Board endorsed the development of a Residential Wood Smoke Emissions Reduction Program which includes an incentive program to replace non-certified wood stoves with cleaner burning alternatives, as well as undertaking investigations to determine whether further regulatory requirements are advisable.

The wood stove exchange program is not meant to encourage more residential wood burning in the region. Rather, its intent is to make use of funding available through the Provincial Wood Stove Exchange Program to reduce wood smoke impacts by:

Home heating retailers will play an important role in the exchange program, by confirming eligibility of homeowners for rebates, ensuring removal of non-certified wood stoves, and distributing educational materials. The program will provide limited assistance to the participating retailers by advertising their names on program promotional materials.

Notwithstanding the need to reduce wood smoke, circumstances in Metro Vancouver are much different than rural areas of British Columbia both in terms of air quality and the contribution of wood smoke to air quality concerns. In urban areas such as Metro Vancouver, diesel particulates represent a much greater threat to human health than wood smoke. For example, the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency has estimated that diesel particulate is responsible for 78% of cancer risks from air toxics, compared with 6% for wood smoke.

While recognizing that more needs to be done to address wood smoke concerns, reducing diesel particulate emissions is Metro Vancouver’s air quality priority. Consequently, Metro Vancouver’s Board has recently endorsed the development of diesel emissions regulations and has also requested substantial support ($35 million) from the federal and provincial governments to establish a Diesel Emission Reduction Incentive Program.

Diesel emission reduction incentive programs make sense as they are one of the most cost effective means of reducing health impacts, climate change impacts, and putting people (mechanics and manufacturers) back to work. Incentive programs are in place in Europe and the US, both at the state and federal levels. Most recently President Obama included a substantial diesel emission reduction program as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Independent financial analysis has suggested that for every dollar spent, there is $6 dollars of economic benefit and between $13 and $40 of health benefits which does not include benefits such as the reduction of pain and suffering.

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