Prince Edward County is running out of time on climate resilience

CLIMATE ACTION PLAN WORKING GROUP
ANGUS ROSS: CHAIR DON WILFORD: VICE CHAIR

By any measure that matters, Prince Edward County is already living in the early chapters of the climate crisis. Summers are hotter. Droughts are longer. Insurance costs are rising. Wells have run dry. Shorelines are eroding. And the financial risks to households and to the municipality are accelerating far faster than we have prepared for.

New analysis from the Climate Action Plan Working Group (CAPWG) lays out the situation with stark clarity: the County’s greenhouse-gas emissions may be small on a global scale, but the climate impacts coming our way are not. In the absence of stronger federal and provincial leadership, the responsibility for preparing our community—financially and physically—now rests squarely at the local level.

This is not a comfortable truth, but it is an unavoidable one.

A COMMUNITY AT RISK, EVEN IF EMISSIONS FALL
The County’s community-wide GHG emissions (excluding municipality owned property and vehicles as well as Lehigh Cement, whose GHG emissions are currently over twice the community emissions) sit at about 232 kilotonnes a year, driven mostly by buildings (41 per cent), transportation (38 per cent) and agriculture (19 per cent). That picture is not surprising for a rural municipality. Nor is it the central problem.

Even if the County successfully electrified heating, expanded transit, improved home efficiency and doubled electric-vehicle uptake, community emissions would fall by only about 20 per cent. Those are worthwhile reductions— but they cannot offset the climate impacts already locked in.

Extreme weather losses in Canada hit a record $9.2 billion in 2024. Private insurers are quietly withdrawing from high-risk areas or raising premiums out of reach. Across the world, catastrophe losses are doubling roughly every decade. Climate damage now behaves like compound interest: the longer we wait to adapt, the steeper the costs become.

The summer of 2025 made this painfully clear when private wells across Prince Edward County ran dry, forcing families to truck water at great personal expense. These burdens fall hardest on residents with the least ability to absorb them.

ADAPTATION IS NOW ESSENTIAL
While reducing emissions remains important, the County’s most urgent task is preparing for the impacts we can no longer avoid. Roads, culverts, stormwater systems and shorelines are all ageing into a harsher climate.

Heatwaves will strain social services and threaten residents without access to cooling. And development choices made today will lock in energy use—and vulnerability—for decades.

CAPWG’s modelling offers a pragmatic roadmap. For new housing, the difference between conventional fossil-fuel builds and lowcarbon, heat-pump-driven developments is enormous: up to 65 kilotonnes of new emissions avoided in high-growth scenarios. Passive- house construction in the County has already demonstrated that high efficiency is possible at similar cost to conventional builds. Clean development is not a luxury—it is the cheapest long-term option. For transportation, recognising that tourist vehicle emissions are counted in their own municipality, not in PEC, electrification of transit and increasing the number of charging stations will make a difference. Tourist vehicle GHG emissions are estimated to be an additional 50 per cent on top of the PEC transportation emissions.

Hydro One has confirmed that the electricity grid can support the additional demand associated with electrified heating and transport, provided upgrades are planned early. That means the barriers are not technological—they’re political and procedural.

Prince Edward County has already declared a climate emergency in 2019. What it has not yet done is fully integrate climate risk into daily governance.

Staff reports are routinely reviewed through financial and strategic lenses. But they are not consistently assessed for climate risk, energy impact, or long-term exposure to heat, drought, flood, or insurance withdrawal. This is an untenable gap.

A formal, mandatory climate lens—applied to infrastructure investments, land-use planning, capital budgets, and development approvals— is no longer optional. It is basic due diligence.

A formal, mandatory climate lens—applied to infrastructure investments, land-use planning, capital budgets, and development approvals— is no longer optional. It is basic due diligence.
CAPWG recommends that the County:

• Develop a unified Climate Action and Adaptation Plan that treats mitigation and resilience as parallel priorities.
• Institutionalize a climate-risk lens across all municipal decisions.
• Establish clear, trackable GHG and adaptation targets with regular public reporting.
• Invest early in flood, drought, and heat preparedness—the cheapest moment to act is always now.
• Partner with the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, utilities, conservation authorities and agricultural and community groups to align planning and share costs.
• Shape future development toward clean, electrified, high-efficiency housing, not more fossil-fuel dependence.
• Support residents through information, incentives and practical tools for heat pumps, EV adoption, retrofits and land stewardship.
• Integrate growth management with energy planning
• Increase protection for natural CO2 sinks (wetlands, marshes, woodlands)

These are not aspirational ideas; they are pragmatic steps grounded in data, economics, and local experience.

We can continue reacting to climate impacts as they strike—through emergency repairs, higher taxes, rising insurance bills and community hardship.

Or we can act now—deliberately, locally, and strategically— to protect what we value most: our homes, our farms, our shorelines, our infrastructure, and our collective well-being.

The climate emergency is no longer a headline. It is a budget line, a planning reality, and a test of leadership. The question for Prince Edward County is not whether we can afford to adapt. It is whether we can afford not to.