Huron County's climate change and energy specialist presented the county's greenhouse gas inventory at Wednesday's county council meeting.
Lily Hamlin explained that over the last two years, their facilities have produced about 60 per cent of the county's emissions and the fleet produced about 40 per cent.
Emissions have gone up by about five per cent each year over the two years they've been tracking them, and Hamlin said that may be related to weather variations, differences in energy management or fuel consumption.
"I definitely think electric vehicles are an option and I'm sure that it will be an area that comes up when I'm developing the county's Climate Adaptation Plan and the strategies within that plan, so it's a conversation that we will probably have in the future," she said.
As far as the facilities are concerned, the county does have a Conservation and Demand Management Plan that oversees the energy use in the buildings, and a committee that oversees the implementation of that plan.
"There's definitely actions that we are taking, including looking LED lighting and optimizing our existing buildings in terms of our HVAC systems. So, there's definitely actions we can still take, but newer buildings can be built obviously to be a lot more efficient," said Hamlin.
Hamlin added that they only have two years of data, but if the current increase in greenhouse gas emissions continued over the next 10 years, the increase would be significant.
