Over the past decade, municipalities have made significant progress in municipal climate action planning. However, implementing these plans has been challenging, especially around community climate action. One of the most commonly cited barriers to implementation is the lack of staff and budgetary resources. Staff participation in a facilitated peer-to-peer implementation capacity building network presents an excellent opportunity to address this barrier. The Climate Action Support Centre (CASC) bridges this gap through Implementation Teams focussed on advancing climate action in key pre-identified areas where this planning/implementation gap exists.
Managed by Clean Air Partnership in conjunction with strategic local and regional partners, CASC will focus on the built environment using three Implementation Teams:
Community Green Development Standards Implementation Team (GDS Team)
Many municipalities have developed voluntary GDS checklists and guidelines. However, uptake from the development community has been limited. The GDS Team: identifies and synthesises municipal process and resources to create a GDS toolkit; tracks municipal GDS progress provincially; creates a GDS staff training program; develops external consultation resources and processes, and; develops education materials on the GDS metrics for the development community.
Home Energy Efficiency Retrofit Implementation Team (Retrofit Team)
Most municipal Climate Action Plans include a commitment to increase uptake of energy efficiency retrofits, however, municipalities have struggled to implement this action. The Retrofit Team employs the Local Improvement Charge (LIC) mechanism to facilitate pilot communities in putting this program into practice. In order to do so, the Retrofit Team is developing a Home Energy Efficiency Retrofit Model Program Toolkit. The Team will identify and develop the resources and actions available to municipalities and their community partners to address barriers to single family home energy efficiency retrofits, and develop program resources and outreach and marketing materials. In 2020, the Retrofit Team will facilitate pilot communities in putting this program into practice.
Overview: Corporate Implementation Team (Corporate Team)
While community climate actions will be key to enabling municipalities to achieve the deep energy reductions needed to achieve our greenhouse gas reduction targets, municipal energy use is often a top priority for municipal staff. In addition, corporate energy reduction actions often serve as a gateway to community climate actions. It is challenging for municipalities to play a leadership role in community GHG reduction targets when they are not on the trajectory to achieve them within their own corporate operations. While community actions are the core focus for CASC, we see corporate action as a key driver behind community successes.
For more information on CASC, please contact Vanessa Cipriani, Project Coordinator at vcipriani@cleanairpartnership.org