Climate Change Action Strategy

Surrey's roadmap to a zero-carbon climate-resilient city in 2050

The Climate Change Action Strategy (CCAS) is Surrey’s plan to achieve greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction targets and improve the community’s resilience to climate change impacts by 2050.

Climate change is happening here and now.

Here in Surrey, we’re experiencing things like more flooding, hotter summers, and poor air quality from wildfire smoke. Impacts in far-away places also affect us here.

Climate change is mostly caused by burning fossil fuels.

When we burn fossil fuels – like gasoline, diesel and natural gas – to power our vehicles and heat our homes, we release GHG emissions into the atmosphere. The gases act like a blanket around the earth that traps the heat of the sun. The more fossil fuel we burn, the thicker we make the blanket, and the hotter it gets. Global heating since the industrial revolution is causing extreme weather and sea level rise, damaging ecosystems, and harming people.

The science is clear: climate change is a global crisis.

We know what we need to do, and there’s still time to act.

Fortunately, we know most of the solutions to turn the crisis around, but we need to act quickly. We can reduce the need for burning fossil fuels in the first place, by making buildings more efficient, by planning our city so more of our daily needs are close to home, and by investing in safe walking, cycling and transit. We can use clean electricity to power our cars and homes. And we can protect and restore our ecosystems like forests and wetlands.

Many of these choices will also make us healthier and help us prepare for the future.