Success Stories

The municipalities of Vaughan, Brampton, and Richmond Hill collaboratively developed a Sustainability Metrics Program to evaluate and score the environmental sustainability performance of new development applications. It includes a menu of metrics that applicants can select from, with each metric worth a certain number of points.

 

The metrics are organized into four categories encompassing the major elements of sustainable community development. There are three levels of sustainability performance, of which applicants must achieve a minimum threshold score to proceed through the application process.

The sustainability metrics encompass healthy, well-designed communities with integrated green spaces, pedestrian and transit networks and offers a variety of options for housing, transportation, and employment. Sustainability metrics help municipalities alleviate pressures from population growth and urbanization by using infrastructure and resources efficiently.

Clean Air Council continues to facilitate efforts to support municipalities in developing and advancing their sustainability metrics. Clean Air Partnership has developed a Towards Low Carbon Communities toolkit, which provides a milestone framework to support municipalities to advance their sustainability metrics.

Canadian municipalities have set greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction targets to help mitigate climate change. In Ontario, the transportation sector contributed 43.9% of total GHG emissions in 2019. Sustainable transportation options, including fleet electrification, are key to achieving municipal climate commitments.

With technological advancement and the availability of widespread charging infrastructure, municipal fleet electrification barriers are fading. Positive business cases demonstrate that EVs are less costly to own and maintain and contribute greatly to the City’s GHG reduction targets. Additionally, they also provide economic, social and environmental benefits.

Municipalities across the CAC network are adopting EV fleets. EVs, including cars, buses, ice resurfacers, transit buses and garbage trucks, have been adopted by municipalities in the CAC network. 

CAC continues to facilitate efforts to advance EV fleet adoption through its webinars and has developed a climate action atlas to highlight ongoing EV fleet adoption efforts by municipalities from the network. Our Green Fleets Business Case Series report provides detailed information on the considerations that fleet managers can include in their EV business case development.

Ontario is a large province. Ontario communities are diverse, including remote communities that do not use gas or have access to the electricity grid. As such, a one size fits all provincial approach to energy planning is problematic. Provincial approaches to energy planning deal with large transmission and distribution infrastructures, large amounts of public funds, with no thermal integration or land use integration. Community level planning is the antithesis to this approach, using small infrastructure, private funds and an integrated energy approach including electricity, natural gas and water, integrated with land use and economic development opportunities. Community level planning has increased local economic benefits, whereby energy investments stay in the community. Furthermore, this style of planning complements and relieves pressure on larger transmission systems; offers greater environmental benefits; and a more robust, resilient energy system with increased energy security and flexibility.

Using population growth estimates and associated long term planning trends as identified through the Places to Grow Act, the City of Toronto realized future pressures on the City’s energy distribution system would be considerable. Toronto’s Community Energy Study informs the long term land use and energy planning context for growth areas within the City. It identifies energy load profiles and opportunities to address energy growth load at source through embedded energy solutions that are compatible with the urban environment, as well as a process for planning and implementing energy conservation and embedded energy supply solutions. These solutions are both commercially and financially viable, achieving conservation and GHG reduction targets, while minimizing life cycle costs and maximizing grid resiliency and energy security. The plan is not prescriptive, and allows for flexibility between developers and the City throughout the development process.

Through the ongoing sharing of community energy planning efforts and lessons learned Clean Air Council members have accelerated their collective community energy knowledge, capacity and efforts, resulting in greater implementation of Community Energy Plans in the Province.