How are cities and communities of all sizes tackling their environmental challenges? Find out from our five-part webinar series on innovations and opportunities in municipal energy, waste, water, transportation and land use initiatives. You’ll hear from municipal champions who have successfully launched sustainability projects, and from Green Municipal Fund (GMF) advisors on how we can bring your projects to life.

In these five sessions you’ll learn about:

• Best practices in managing innovative environmental projects
• Leading solutions that provide social, economic and environmental benefits
• Emerging trends in land use, waste and water
• GMF funding opportunities for your sustainability initiative

The series was recorded in February and March of 2020. More details and links for each webinar recording can be found below.

Please note that recordings are in English only. Transcripts are available in French and English.

1. From funding to feasibility: new possibilities in energy efficiency             

Discover how GMF can support your energy efficiency initiative and take inspiration from Hamilton’s Ken Soble Tower Transformation —an innovative social housing transformation project that reduces GHG emissions through Passive House retrofit.

Speakers

• Rachel Deslauriers, Manager, Programs Outreach, Green Municipal Fund, Federation of Canadian Municipalities    
• Sean Botham, Senior Development Project Manager
• Tom Hunter, CEO, CityHousing Hamilton

Read the transcript

2. Financing sustainable transportation: how GMF can help

Canadian communities are building clean transportation networks. Learn more about the Accelerate Kootenays electric vehicle charging network that facilitates connection in the region. Find out how you can use GMF funding to develop green transportation in your municipality.

Speakers

• Patrick Kehoe, Advisor, Programs Outreach, Green Municipal Fund, FCM       
• Megan Lohmann, Head of Community Energy Management, Community Energy Association

Read the transcript

3. An integrated approach to sustainable land use management

Discover which high-impact practices can help your municipality use and manage land more sustainably and learn how Edmonton’s effort to integrate planning across divisions is moving them towards smarter, greener growth.              

Speakers

• John Purkis, Director, Purkis Strategies
• Ray Tomalty, Principal, Smart Cities Research Services
• Kalen Anderson, Director, City Plan Office of the Chief Planner, City Planning, City of Edmonton

Read the transcript

4. Transforming the waste sector  

The Guelph-Wellington municipal partnership is set to become Canada’s first technology-enabled Circular Food Economy. Learn how that project and emerging sector trends are driving change in waste management.           

Speakers

• Laurie Giroux, Director and Business Owner,, Giroux Environmental Consulting            
• Jo-Anne St. Godard, Executive Director, Recycling Council of Ontario

Read the transcript

5. Advancing municipal water management            

Learn about the emerging trends in Canada’s water sector and explore ways you can shape your next project. Discover how Toronto is integrating technological and geo-digital solutions to support operations, improve efficiency, and leverage predictive data.

Speakers

• Bernadette Conant, CEO, Canadian Water Network
• William Shea, Director, Distribution & Collection, Toronto Water

Read the transcript

Rapid growth and urbanization bring new pressures and increasing challenges for municipalities. In order for communities to deliver the quality of life citizens expect, municipalities need to effectively manage the use of their energy and water resources. Since buildings are major consumers of energy and water, and generate waste, air pollution, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, municipalities can help manage the increased demand on their resources through the development of green development standards.

About The Municipal Green Development Standards Toolkit

Clean Air Partnership (CAP) collaborated with eight municipalities to develop a toolkit to help communities develop and implement green development standards (GDS) for new residential buildings. This project was funded by FCM’s Municipalities for Climate Innovation Program’s Transition 2050 initiative.

The tool, Towards Low Carbon Communities: Creating Municipal Green Development Standards, An Implementation Toolkit for Municipal Staff, helps municipalities achieve Official Plan objectives, such as GHG reduction targets, and goals related to sustainability, health and economic development. The tool considers how communities can grow healthy, well-designed communities that have integrated greenspace, pedestrian and transit networks, and also offer a variety of housing, transportation, human services, and employment options. GDS help municipalities alleviate pressures from population growth and urbanization by using infrastructure and resources efficiently.

“Municipalities are facing new pressures and increasing challenges from climate change, rapid growth and urbanization. New developments represent a critical opportunity for municipalities to take bold climate action and effectively manage their use of energy and water resources. At the same time, they can improve the quality of life and competitiveness for their community members.”

– Vanessa Cipriani

To create the toolkit, CAP hosted monthly webinars and worked with municipalities to gather and document lessons learned. With input from communities, CAP created a milestone approach to creating municipal green development standards.

The following municipalities collaborated on the development of this toolkit:

• Town of Whitby
• City of Vaughan
• Municipality of Clarington
• Town of Caledon
• City of Guelph
• Town of Halton Hills
• City of Ottawa
• City of Toronto

Create green development standards in your municipality

By following the toolkit’s milestone framework, your municipality can develop, implement and track green development standards.

The toolkit is available to all Canadian municipalities to help you:

• Learn about the health, environmental and economic benefits that green development standards offer
• Advance through a milestone framework to develop, implement and track your green development standards
• Communicate the value of green development standards to decision makers
• Create standards for your community based on sample metrics
• Design consultation and engagement plans to gather feedback on your standards
• Develop incentives for development applicants

Use the tool.

Who is this tool for

This tool will be useful for municipal staff in the following departments: planning, development, sustainability, climate change, transportation, forestry, parks, and engineering.

Contact

Vanessa Cipriani
Project Coordinator
vcipriani@cleanairpartnership.org

Kevin Behan
Deputy Director
kbehan@cleanairpartnership.org

Asset management, financial sustainability and extreme weather resiliency are key issues in Canada’s municipal water sector. That is one of the takeaways from this snapshot of existing and emerging water management trends, best practices and opportunities for innovation.

Five key trends are driving decisions in this sector:

• financial sustainability
• the expanding role of water utilities
• changing public expectations
• growing uncertainty regarding future conditions
• new technology

In response to these trends, five objectives will drive utility decisions and investments over the next 5-10 years:

• undertake proactive asset management
• reduce operating costs
• increase system resilience
• improve revenue generation
• manage urban flooding

The report details these and other trends and objectives guiding water manager’s decisions. It also highlights priorities for the sector over the next 5-10 years.

Read the report.

Every five years, FCM engages a third-party to conduct both a review and a performance audit of the Green Municipal Fund (GMF). This assessment covers the work occurring April 1, 2014 through March 31, 2019. Ernst & Young conducted the work and provided the two final reports in September 2019.

FCM is pleased with the results of the Five-Year Review and the Five-Year Performance Audit and is in agreement with Ernst & Young’s findings and recommendations. These recommendations will help guide further improvements to the delivery and continued relevance of our GMF programming to stakeholders.

Read the review results.

Read the performance audit results.

From the planning, engineering and sustainability departments, to the front line staff, every municipal employee can play a role in addressing climate change impacts in their community. Integrating climate change data and considerations needs to happen in day-to-day municipal operation, not just through major community or service delivery plans. Read this page to learn about questions you can ask and tools you can use in your work to take climate action.

How can considering climate change resiliency improve your community’s governance and operations?

The key to achieving climate integration is building awareness of potential impacts among elected officials, staff, and the community, and knowing where to go for help and resources. Considering climate change impacts in day-to-day governance and operations will help your community:

• Better understand and respond to the localized impacts of climate change as it relates to your community. For example, when operations staff clearly document the response of infrastructure to events like storms or floods, it improves the understanding of how changes to climate may impact the infrastructure. This is valuable information to incorporate in risk assessments, business cases, and communication with the public.
• Leverage ongoing decisions and processes as practical opportunities to build climate resilience. For example, your community can modify the design of a replacement for a failed culvert to include an allowance for increased flow due to climate change, even if the local government has not officially adopted new intensity-duration-frequency curves (IDF curves).
• Identify the need for other planning when it becomes clear that business-as-usual decisions are not enough for building community resilience. For example, questions that arise about future flood impacts while reviewing a specific development permit may highlight the need to review and update floodplain maps and community zoning.

What are other Canadian communities doing? In the Town of Caledon (Ontario), the Town developed a detailed Climate Change Vulnerability and Risk Assessment (CCVRA). The results of the CCVRA showed a variety of impacts to various operations and service areas in the Town as well as the broader community. To help communicate these results, the Town created a series of two-page factsheets that presented the information according the systems (built, human, natural) that were at risk to climate change. The fact sheets aid in the communication of climate risks to both internal departments as well as more broadly to community stakeholders.

Key learning: Municipal staff play a crucial role in identifying and preparing their communities for climate change impacts.

The City of Edmonton (Alberta) has been a longtime leader on climate change action. Historically, the City has taken steps to manage and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Recently the City developed a comprehensive process of identifying climate risks and developing its Climate Resilient Edmonton Adaptation Strategy and Action Plan to address them. As part of this process, the City included a comprehensive assessment of the economic impacts of inaction (the economic impacts to local GDP, health costs, and to the natural environment) as well as the investments required to update infrastructure and ensure adequate service delivery.

Key learning: Integrating climate change impacts into your community’s processes ensures that your vision of a resilient community is applied.

Where can you find climate data and resources?

The Canadian Centre for Climate Services (CCCS) provides climate data and a variety of resources for integrating climate considerations into local government decisions. If you are not sure where to start, the table below provides an overview of some common local government decision points with example questions and resources to help your municipality consider climate change impacts.

This resource was developed by the Municipalities for Climate Innovation Program (2017-2022). This program was delivered by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and funded by the Government of Canada.

Is your municipality updating or renewing its community plan? Integrating climate change considerations into your approach is one of the main ways to make climate action a priority in your community. Check out this page to learn what climate considerations you should be integrating in your planning activities and learn about some of the tools you may want to use before you create your plan.

Across Canada, local governments are responsible for developing and documenting their vision for how their communities will grow and thrive in the future. Depending on your community, your vision is documented in an Official Community Plan, Official Plan, Regional Growth Strategy, or a Municipal Development Plan.

How can your community plan support climate resiliency?

How we plan our communities influences how resilient they are to the impacts of natural and man-made hazards, including climate change. It is far easier and cost effective to create sustainable and resilience communities through thoughtful planning than it is to rehabilitate natural systems that have been destroyed, build protective infrastructure for communities that are vulnerable, or attempt to relocate residents or businesses in high risk areas. Good community planning supports community resilience because it:

• Looks at the whole community together. It offers a big-picture, systems-wide view of climate impacts and risks that few other planning processes offer.
• Sets community priorities. Integrating climate considerations into community plans prioritizes climate change action alongside other local government processes. Research into 732 Canadian communities found that communities that considered climate change in their community plans were much more likely to consider climate change in secondary plans.
• Influences a range of tools used to manage climate risk. The municipal tools to combat climate change include policies, regulations, operations and maintenance procedures, and design standards. These municipal tools can conform to the direction set in the community plan.

What are other Canadian communities doing?

In the City of Calgary (Alberta), both urban and riverine flooding is a major concern for residents and businesses. In response, as part of the City’s Municipal Development Plan (MDP) adopted in 2018, the City included a section on policies that give direction to guide the planning and regulations that govern the development within the Flood Hazard Area (FHA). The corresponding section of the MDP outlines the risk of flooding and increasing frequencies of flooding under a changing climate and the various policies that the City consider to increase public safety, reduce private and public property damage and enhance the city’s flood resiliency.

Key learning: The City of Calgary actively strengthened its policies around flooding with data in an effort to protect citizens.

The City of Kawartha Lakes (Ontario) took a unique approach to climate action as the City’s Healthy Environment Plan (HEP) considers integrated climate action – addressing mitigation and adaptation holistically. Community involvement in the development of the plan was also notably strong. The plan was developed collaboratively with a Steering Committee made up of staff from several City departments and local institutions, as well as a Working Group of 23 external organizations who represented cross section of local organizations and provided a broader sense of community interests and priorities. Community members also contributed throughout the planning process, providing input on the proposed vision, goals and strategies. Conversations with over 2,600 people and 40 organizations, institutions and community groups, helped to shape the content of the HEP.

Key learning: The City of Kawartha Lakes made collaboration a key part of their planning process, which considered the community (and the municipality) as a whole.

How can your municipality include climate considerations in your community plan?

Community planning is one of the key tools available to local governments when it comes to preparing for and adapting to climate change impacts.

Include climate change data and considerations when developing your community plan by:

• Identifying how the climate is expected to change and the types of impacts that climate change will have on the community;
• Setting community goals, objectives, and policies that prioritize managing climate risks and adaptation actions;
• Evaluating climate risks and vulnerabilities that may impact the goals and objectives of other community strategic goals;
• Evaluating land uses based on climate change risk and minimize vulnerability through land use designations;
• Prioritizing resiliency when planning land use in the flood plain;
• Planning for the maintenance or enhancement of natural assets that support climate change resilience and other goals;
• Setting directions for regulatory tools (e.g., zoning bylaw) to incorporate consideration of climate risk, vulnerability, and adaptation actions; and
• Setting directions for other plans and initiatives (e.g., infrastructure master plans, climate change adaptation plans etc.) to incorporate climate risk, vulnerability, and adaptation actions.

Where can you find Climate Data and Planning Tool and Resources?

Each community is unique in both the scope and contents of its community plan, and in the types of information that will be relevant for the local context. Below are a few resources that can support integrating climate change considerations into community plans.

This resource was developed by the Municipalities for Climate Innovation Program (2017-2022). This program was delivered by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and funded by the Government of Canada.