In 2018, The City of Red Deer developed a Community Energy and Emissions Plan (CEEP) as a tool to help define priorities around energy consumption to improve efficiency, reduce emissions, and drive economic development. The CEEP establishes a community-wide energy use and emissions inventory, identifies potential emissions reductions targets, and proposes policies and actions to achieve those targets. The CEEP identifies ways to manage the future by producing and using energy more wisely, building more efficient homes, travelling in energy efficient ways, producing less waste, and better managing the waste produced.

Part 1 of the CEEP (pdf) provides a baseline from which to measure progress, forecasts energy use and emissions through 2035, and outlines high-level options to reduce emissions. Part 2 (pdf) acknowledges current actions and identifies future actions that The City and the community can take to reduce energy use and emissions. Actions in seven themes are analyzed for what’s already happening in the community, what actions could be taken to go further, how those actions would reduce emissions, and the benefits of taking those actions.

In 2019, the CEEP was integrated into the City’s Environmental Master Plan with the recommendation to implement the CEEP as Red Deer’s climate change mitigation strategy.