T2050 - Clean Air Partnership

The past decade witnessed considerable municipal progress in climate action planning, but implementation has lagged, especially around community actions. Through our extensive municipal experience, we witnessed municipalities working in isolation trying to solve common implementation problems. Staff participation in our proposed facilitated peer-to-peer implementation capacity building network presents an excellent opportunity to reduce redundancy and duplication in staff time, addressing the implementation stall through the efficient provision of resources, using a collective approach to solve a collective problem. Focusing on the built environment, both existing and new buildings, CALCI will use facilitated Implementation Teams (detailed below) to advance climate action in key action areas where this planning/implementation gap exists. Community Green Development Standards Implementation Team (new buildings) (GDS Team) Few municipalities have developed GDS that embed sustainability metrics from the beginning of the development application process, requiring developers to meet a threshold of metric uptake in order to proceed through an application process. This mechanism has been found to significantly increase uptake from the development community. The GDS Team will create a GDS toolkit and training program to move municipalities from planning to implementation. While GDS are an existing mechanism, they have not been appropriately scaled, and present an excellent growth opportunity, we anticipate reductions of 2,791,738 tCO2e by 2050** through this stream. Home Energy Efficiency Retrofits Implementation Team (existing buildings) (Retrofit Team)Most municipal Climate Action Plans include a commitment to increase home energy efficiency retrofits. However, implementation has been poor. The Retrofit Team will provide the efficiencies of scale necessary to tackle this sector through the development of a model Comprehensive Home Energy Efficiency Retrofit Program that addresses energy efficiency uptake barriers, develops joint marketing and outreach resources, identifies financing options, and increases local capacity to serve the sector. The Retrofit Team municipalities will serve as pilot communities to put this program into practice. Mobilizing the Local Improvement Charge (LIC) mechanism (which CAP has led in Ontario) will be fundamental to the success of the Team. This Team seeks to scale up the adoption of proven technologies to affect change at the residential level, anticipating reductions of 1,270,668 tCO2e by 2050**.Corporate Implementation Team (new and existing municipal buildings and fleet) (Corporate Team)While community climate actions are key to enabling municipalities to achieve deep GHG reductions, municipal energy use (while only approximately 5% of total community GHG emissions) is a priority for municipal staff, and is often a gateway to community climate actions. There is a strong desire on the part of municipalities to get their own house in order prior to reaching out to the community to play a leadership and enabling role on community GHG reductions. While community actions are the core focus for CALCI, we see corporate action as a key driver behind community success. The Corporate Team will focus primarily on the adoption of green fleets, and corporate building retrofit uptake, anticipating reductions of 70,129 tCO2e. by 2050**.