The City of Vernon's electric van (stock photo courtesy of the city)

By Liam Verster

Emission Reduction Outreach

Vernon recommits to climate action mitigation, will inspire individual efforts

Oct 31, 2025 | 6:00 AM

The City of Vernon plans to continue its work to address climate change at a personal level.

At the regular meeting Monday, Oct. 27, Vernon City Council was asked to authorize using money from the Climate Action Revolving Fund to continue work outlined in the Climate Action Community Outreach Strategy.

The strategy encompasses Vernon’s Climate Action Plan, which has eight key focus areas aimed at supporting the community to reduce emissions. Those involve health and wellbeing; infrastructure and services; governance; land use and transportation; ecosystem health and biodiversity; buildings and real estate; economic development; and agriculture and food security.

A city staff report said the implementation of the Climate Action Plan contributed to the city’s corporate greenhouse gas emissions declining by 7.5 per cent between 2017 and 2024. However, community-wide emissions from individuals increased 6.3 per cent from 2017 to 2022.

The report stated that community outreach was identified as a key focus for further climate action work, as the emissions from individuals continue to climb, and asked that $720,000 be made available to fund outreach initiatives and inspire citizens to make changes to reduce their pollution.

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Council voted unanimously in favour of allocating the money from the fund, which had a balance of $803,339 as of Monday.

Additionally, staff asked council to rename the Climate Action Revolving Fund to the Climate Action Initiatives Reserve, which was approved unanimously as well.