MOECC Community Emissions Reduction Planning: A Guide for Municipalities

Client Ministry of Environment and Climate Change
Location Ontario
Timeline March 2017 – March 2018

Project Overview

The Province of Ontario’s 2017 5-year Climate Action Plan includes direction to make climate change a provincial interest in Ontario’s Planning Act, to require consideration of climate change mitigation and adaptation in municipal Official Plans, and to support community energy plans and climate action plans.

To provide a municipal framework for these requirements and considerations, SSG authored Community Emissions Reduction Planning: A Guide for Municipalities. The Guide describes comprehensive approaches to community-wide and municipal/corporate climate action planning, for any size municipality.

The Guide was informed by best planning practices and implementation approaches from municipal climate action plans across North America. The Guide details climate planning policies and programs, protocols, methodologies and climate action planning frameworks, and suggests how to integrate these elements with municipal land use and infrastructure planning.

Ontario cities can use the guide as a step-by-step approach to developing municipal climate action plans, community energy and emissions plans, and municipal energy plans, considering its direction on developing energy and emissions inventories, setting emissions reduction targets, performing scenario analysis, and assessing financial implications of policies and actions, among many other elements.

The Guide can be found here.