The City of Calgary has its own, very ambitious, climate change action plan, a plan that sets a new standard for major cities around the globe.

Target Minus 50 calls for The City to reduce its corporate greenhouse gas emissions by 50 per cent below 1990 levels by the year 2012.

In 2006, The City signed North America's largest-ever single green energy contract, making The City of Calgary the second largest user of green electricity on the continent and the only municipality in Canada to draw at least 75 per cent of its electricity from renewable energy. And the plan calls for increasing this to 90 per cent by 2012.

Other climate change programs include retrofitting all residential streetlights with energy-efficient fixtures, electronics recycling depots, introducing green vehicles into City fleets, and using captured landfill gases as a power source.

For our green energy and other climate change initiatives, Calgary was awarded the national Federation of Canadian Municipalities -CH2M Hill Sustainable Community Award in the energy / renewable energy category.