Where we’re at today in relation to our targets:  

Canada has set a target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 40 to 45% below 2005 levels by 2030. Total emissions in 2019, the most recent year for which an official inventory exists, were at or slightly below 2005 levels. So for practical purposes, the 40 to 45% reduction target applies to today’s level of emissions. But for transportation, emissions are up over 2005 levels, and meeting our target will require a steeper decline than for other sectors.  

Total emissions from all modes of transportation in 2019 were 14% above 2005 levels. More than two-thirds of the energy use and emissions in the transportation sector are from the exhaust pipes of cars and trucks, and in 2019 these emissions were up 18% over 2005 levels. It will take a 50% reduction from current levels to meet our target. 

The hitch:  

Every fossil-powered car or truck purchased today makes it that much more difficult and expensive to achieve a 50% reduction in road transportation emissions by 2030. Cars and trucks last for eight to 12 years, and sometimes much longer. The vehicles that are being sold in Canada today will be on the road in 2030, and more than 95% of them are powered by fossil fuels.  

What to watch:  

That’s why tracking the annual market share of electric or other zero-emission vehicles is a key indicator of how effectively we are responding to the climate emergency. For personal vehicles, meeting our 2030 target might still be possible but would require that the electric vehicle (EV) share of new sales ramp up from its current level of less than 5% to 50% within five short years, reaching 100% by 2030. For medium and heavy trucks, the transition is not as far along. 

There are other strategies that can have an impact between now and 2030, including increased fuel-efficiency standards for combustion vehicles, investment in and encouragement of shared mobility, public transit and active transportation, increased use of “ultra-light” EVs for local trips, and greater use of telepresence technologies that can reduce the number and length of vehicle trips. 

Proposed Earth Index indicators: 

• % of sales of personal vehicles that are non-emitting: 50% by 2026 and 100% by 2030 
• % of sales of medium and heavy trucks that are non-emitting: 50% by 2030 
• % of vehicles that are non-emitting by 2030: 50% of personal vehicles and 15% of trucks 

The decarbonization of the transport sector will be capital intensive, although prices will decline as the implementation rate increases. The incremental costs of the vehicles and the home and public charging infrastructure over the next critical 10 years will be in the range of $120 billion. Annual emission reductions in 2030 will exceed 73 megatonnes of CO2 equivalent. 

The challenge of getting the carbon out of the transport sector, and doing it quickly, epitomizes the “wicked” nature of the climate emergency. The technology is available, but putting it in place in time to avert climate catastrophe will come with the disruption that inevitably accompanies grand transitions. There will be stranded assets and there will be winners and losers, but it is a disruption we can and must embrace if we are to succeed in building a healthier and more sustainable economy. 

Ralph Torrie is Corporate Knights’ director of research. 

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Across Canada, cyclists are enjoying new respect. Calgary city officials started closing major roads on weekends to give walkers and cyclists more room to roam. Vancouver banned cars from Stanley Park Drive, the picturesque road through the city’s famous park, and partially closed nearby Beach Avenue to make more room for humans. Toronto is fast-tracking plans for 40 kilometres of new lanes. Montreal announced plans to add 327 kilometres of bicycle paths and pedestrian lanes this summer. Abroad, France is creating 650 kilometres of cycleways and offering €50 per person for bike repairs.

The bicycle’s shining moment may have been in April, when both Toronto and the province of Quebec named bike shops “essential services,” enabling them to stay open during the lockdown.

Vélo Québec, a non-profit that promotes cycling, made a strong case for the exemption. “It’s a way of travelling where you can keep physical distance from each other,” said VQ president Suzanne Lareau. “The number-one reason people don’t ride bikes in the city is because they’re afraid of the cars, but from one day to the next, that problem disappeared. So it’s important to remember that biking is a great form of transport, even in a pandemic.”

Even bike mechanics have become heroes, braving infection risks as they handle other people’s bike parts. “We’re on the front lines because everyone wants their bike [repaired],” one store owner told the Montreal Gazette. “We’re trying to be extra careful, but it’s scary.”

The same bike boom is happening around the world. The number of bicycles crossing New York City’s East River bridges doubled following the COVID shutdown. Bogotá, Colombia, added 76 kilometres of bike lanes to provide additional cycling capacity. Berlin has already widened some roads to make room for cyclists. According to The Guardian, 133 other German cities submitted applications for more “pop-up” bike lanes.

Celebrity urbanist Richard Florida is urging cities to expand bike lanes and encourage bike- and scooter-sharing programs – not just during the lockdown, but for the long haul.

The Netherlands’ reserved bicycle “highways,” and their inner-city bicycle corridors that can be opened to vehicles at the press of a button in case of emergency, demonstrate that North American cities have a long way to go to catch up to Europe’s pedal-powered infrastructure.

For individuals, cycling “means cheaper travel and better health,” says Chris Heaton-Harris, the U.K.’s transport minister. “For business, it means increased productivity and increased footfall in shops. And for society as a whole it means lower congestion, better air quality and vibrant, attractive places and communities.”

A version of this story appeared in the Summer Issue of Corporate Knights.

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Car-sharing, bike-sharing, scooter-sharing and other modes of shared mobility are probably the most impressive growth story in transportation today. The global shared mobility market is forecast to hit US$138.7 billion by 2023. And if it’s adopted as quickly as smartphones and the internet, shared mobility could account for some 80% of total miles driven in the United States by 2040. Whether or not the environmental and other potential benefits of shared mobility are fully achieved hinges largely on just how effective municipalities policies are.

As new research confirms that ride-hailing services have increased traffic delays by 40% in San Francisco, the city is considering a per-ride tax on operators, with revenues to be used to reduce congestion. It’s a model we may well see Canadian cities adopt. If so, ride-hailing will likely lose ground against truer shared mobility options that deliver environmental benefits.

Car-share services have reduced the appeal of private vehicle ownership and have also been early adopters of zero- and low-emission cars. Vancouver’s Modo, for example, already has a 20% electric and hybrid fleet and just became the first-car share company to introduce hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. Micro-mobility services such as scooter-sharing are entirely electric.

All of these benefits can translate into reductions in Canada’s second largest source of carbon emissions behind oil and gas: transportation.

The size of that potential environmental prize is one of the reasons our Vancouver-based research team regularly ranks 20 leading North American cities, based on the current scope of and future-development potential for shared mobility. The 2019 edition of the Shared Mobility Cities Index (SMCI) shows that cities are abandoning an earlier watch-and-wait stance, and becoming much more activist in fostering and regulating shared mobility.

So where are Canadian cities parked on this year’s Index?

Montreal rides into top spot

Montreal is the top-ranked Canadian city. It edged ahead of Vancouver in this year’s SMCI, tying with Portland for fifth spot. Montrealers have access to a wide range of shared mobility services and partnerships, including peer-to-peer car sharing. New condo owners sometimes receive a “mobility passport” as a welcome gift from real estate developers, providing a year of transportation across transit and car- and bike-sharing service. And testing began last fall of an integrated approach through which holders of an Opus transit smartcard pass would be able to use it to hop on a Bixi bike, flag a cab or book a Communauto shared car.

It’s also one of a handful of cities developing mobility hubs – strategic locations where multiple modes of shared and sustainable transportation are concentrated.

Although Montreal has set the goal of reducing car ownership per household from an already modest 0.90 to 0.79, a progress report last year found the trend moving in the wrong direction.

Vancouver slips in the ranks

Vancouver dropped from fifth to seventh spot, despite its continued status as the continent’s car-sharing capital. More than a third of residents use the city’s 3,000 shared vehicles, provided by four different operators.  Beginning this year, Vancouver requires transportation demand management (TDM) plans for large development projects, which incent developers to do such things as provide memberships in and dedicated parking spaces for shared-vehicle service providers.

Vancouver’s the only Canadian city where people who get to work by car are in the minority among commuters (albeit only just). And while transit commuting is less prevalent than in Montreal or Toronto, that’s more than made up for by the Vancouverites who take advantage of a warmer climate to bike or walk to work.

At this point, Vancouver remains the only SMCI city without ride-hailing services like Uber or Lyft, which may ultimately help keep its congestion in check. The current provincial government has promised a regulatory framework by year-end, but if the target date slips by unmet it wouldn’t be the first time. Vancouver has also been slow to embrace micro-mobility options such as scooters and mopeds, leaving it bottom-rung on a measure of the range of shared mobility.

Toronto lags in shared mobility race

Despite being heralded as having the best transit system in Canada, Toronto is well behind on shared mobility, largely because it has not kept pace with the progressive regulatory approaches and programs increasingly seen in other cities.

The city’s residents have access to most of the major forms of car-sharing – with round-trip car-sharing company Maven adding to the competition early last year – as well as docked bike-sharing and ride-hailing and ride-sharing services. There’s also a peer-to-peer car-sharing service called Turo.

One indication of Toronto’s regulatory shortcomings was the withdrawal last year of Car2Go (more recently merged and re-branded as ShareNow) after it charged that the city’s parking permit pilot program was too restrictive and costly.

While Toronto does have sustainability plans in place addressing mobility, congestion and C02 reduction, specific measures to advance shared mobility are limited. Zoning bylaws, for example, don’t encourage the incorporation of shared mobility into new development design.

Lessons from the Bay Area

The top-ranking city in this year’s SMCI isn’t in Canada, it’s in northern California. San Francisco has reached an ambitious “mode shift goal” set in 2017, which means that more than half of all trips from and within the city are now by transit, bicycle or foot. It also has a full range of shared mobility options, including peer-to-peer and other variations on car-sharing, docked and dock-less bike-sharing, and electric moped and powered-scooter sharing.

What can Canadian cities learn from the foggy city? San Francisco’s high scores mainly stem from its holistic regulatory and strategic approach rooted in part in high-level GHG reduction goals. That includes designing complete streets that encourage multiple modes of transportation, congestion pricing on toll roads and building infrastructure for zero-emissions vehicles.

San Francisco has also nixed minimum parking requirements for many new developments. It has an ordinance requiring that Google and other larger employers subsidize biking, transit and pooled commuting.  It’s also piloting shared mobility programs for dockless electric bike and scooter-sharing services.

Driving it home

Shared mobility is revolutionizing personal transportation. When we can hop seamlessly from bike to bus to electric vehicle – or whatever combination best gets us where we’re going – private vehicle use will be further de-valued, and we’ll better leverage the strengths of public transit and all other forms of shared mobility. To get there, we need cities putting their hands firmly on the wheel to steer things in this direction.

Seven Deadly-Effective Shared Mobility Policies

Our assessment of shared mobility policies across leading North American cities suggests these seven measures are particularly effective at capturing shared mobility’s full potential and avoiding possible pitfalls:

 

• Give shared vehicles parking privileges, in return for good fleet management and sharing of trip data with an independent clearinghouse such as a university

• Create incentives to build mobility hubs, where a wide range of shared and sustainable mobility infrastructure is co-located for ease of integration

• Work towards separated lanes for e-bikes, electric mopeds and e-scooters, to improve uptake and safety of micro-mobility options

• Have clear requirements for developers to minimize the contribution to congestion that new projects will create, with shared mobility infrastructure and incentives among the options

• Make parking less available and more expensive

• Create congestion-pricing zones or implement transportation taxes (to which ride-hailing is also subject) and dedicate the revenue to transit

• Use open innovation and private-public partnerships to identify and implement new ways of better integrating public transit with all forms of shared mobility

Source: 2019 movmi Shared Mobility Cities Index

Sandra Phillips is founder and CEO of movmi, a Vancouver-based consulting firm that works with entrepreneurs, non-profits, transit authorities, real estate developers and others to co-design shared mobility solutions. She is the lead author of the Shared Mobility Cities Index.

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The unexpected or improbable happen, sometimes for good, sometimes for bad. We can only hope for the former. Heck, maybe we’ll see a true breakthrough in that elusive goal of nuclear fusion power production – you just won’t see me predicting it here. That said, certain sustainability themed events in 2014 do offer a sense of what we can reasonably expect to witness in 2015, even if based on momentum alone. Here are a few to consider:

Keystone dies

Despite confident talk out of TransCanada chief executive Russ Girling, the Keystone XL pipeline project will likely get the official thumbs down, to the delight of critics such as billionaire Tom Steyer. The United States, for one, is flush with domestic shale oil and doesn’t need Canada’s oil as much anymore, and some of Obama’s final comments in 2014 suggest a rejection is coming. For example, speaking on The Colbert Report in early December, Obama called Keystone a potential contributor to climate change and said there “aren’t a lot” of jobs likely to be created from it. “Essentially, this is Canadian oil passing through the United States to be sold on the world market,” explained the man who can veto any attempts to get Keystone built. “It’s not going to push down gas prices here in the United States. It’s good for Canada.” Since when has a U.S. president approved something just because it’s good for Canada?

Pope pumps up Paris

There’s a general sense out there that the UN climate summit in Paris (COP21) won’t be just another bureaucratic gabfest leading to nothing. Progress was made at the Lima conference in December, and the chorus of influential stakeholders urging action – political, business and religious leaders of all stripes, as well as major international institutions and institutional investors – has grown substantially louder. The U.S.-China climate deal, despite its flaws, carried tremendous symbolic weight and the voice of climate skepticism has faded into irrelevance. The voice of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, on the other hand, is expected to grow substantially after Pope Francis issues a clarion call to action in the lead-up to Paris. As reported in the Guardian, the Pope is also expected to address the UN general assembly and meet with leaders from the world’s other main religions to build support for his message. On the ground, public calls for climate action have grown increasingly intense, as demonstrated by the People’s Climate March in September. All forces appear to be aligned and determined. Obama has even made it a ballot issue in the 2016 election.

Demands on disclosure

Investors, meanwhile, will grow increasingly aware of “carbon bubble” risks in 2015 as more of the world’s central bankers – following in the footsteps of the Bank of England – recognize such risks as both real and material. As momentum builds on climate action, so too will pressure on companies to be more transparent about climate risks and on major asset owners to disclose both the carbon intensity of their holdings and their exposure to climate risks – from resource scarcity to extreme weather to regulation and carbon pricing. The spotlight is shining particularly bright on the spending of oil companies.

Green bond breakout

The flipside of climate risk is climate opportunity, and nowhere is this clearer than in the area of green bonds. The market more than tripled in 2014 and could triple again in 2015 to nearly $100 billion. That’s still a tiny portion of the $80 trillion global bond market, but it’s a psychological milestone that gives green bonds some much-needed credibility beyond niche circles. Expect more governments – federal, subnational and municipal – to embrace green bonds as a way to fund low carbon, climate-resilient infrastructure, and a double-downed commitment from international lending agencies such as the World Bank. For an in-depth overview of the green bond market, check out Bernard Simon’s special report this month in Corporate Knights magazine and online.

EVs proliferate

A look-ahead piece wouldn’t be complete without some sort of comment on low-carbon transportation, particularly electric vehicles. Sales in 2014, of both plug-in hybrids and pure electrics, didn’t live up to projections. In the U.S., for example, Obama set a target of one million cars by 2015. But by the end of 2014 there were only about 270,000 plug-in vehicles on U.S. roads. Annually, such vehicles still represent less than 1 per cent of total vehicle purchases. EV critics will point to that as failure, but haters gonna hate, right? Fact is, plug-in vehicles at this stage in their development are outpacing the growth of hybrid vehicles, and in 2015 carmakers will continue to expand the number of models that are commercially available. Deutsche Bank analyst Rod Lache recently said battery costs for EVs continue to fall, choice in the market continues to climb, and compliance with efficiency regulations will make internal combustion engines more expensive. As climate regulations tighten, countries will lean more on the potential of using low-carbon electricity to power transportation. Low gasoline prices, meanwhile, are a blip that will not derail the long-term trend. I’ll go out on a limb, however, and declare there will be a big announcement regarding energy storage in 2015, and it won’t come from Tesla. I’ll also declare attempts by Hyundai, Toyota and Honda to introduce fuel-cell vehicles in 2015 will fall flat – again. And expect electric utilities to more actively support EV growth in 2015. As this Edison Electric Institute report concludes, their survival depends on EV proliferation.

Crowdfunding jumps shark

Crowdfunding sites were all the rage in 2014, so much so that it’s quite possible general-purpose crowdfunding sites such as Indiegogo and Kickstarter will jump the shark in 2015. Such sites have become dumping grounds for projects that haven’t been able to get funding support anywhere else – and for good reason. Sure, there are some good quality projects hidden within the garbage, but finding them has become too time consuming. As well, the number of crowdfunding promotional e-mails entering inboxes has grown exponentially, causing crowdfunding fatigue to set in. Not that crowdfunding doesn’t serve a noble purpose, but the novelty is wearing off. If I’m right on this, we’ll see the crowdfunding marketplace become increasingly fragmented in 2015, with more sites emerging that target a particular type of funder. This means increased reliance on Google-style tracking as part of efforts to build loyal networks that support well-defined causes. We’re already seeing this with some sites supporting serious scientific research and renewable energy projects.

Smart home delivers

Could 2015 be a pivotal year for the smart home? Based on observations while shopping this holiday season, it looks like smart home technologies are ripe and ready for mainstream adoption. You can sense it by reading the weekend flyers from Best Buy, or walking through Home Depot. Intelligent LED light bulbs, switches, thermostats and sensors are cheaper and easier to install. There’s more selection. They synch easily with your home’s existing Wi-Fi and you can control them with free iOS and Android apps downloaded to your smart device. I recently purchased an IP security camera for $99, connected it to my home Wi-Fi in minutes, and effortlessly downloaded an app that lets me watch my dog while I’m at work. While not a sustainability app per se, it’s an illustration of the ease with which these technologies can be installed and used. Expect choice on the market to explode in 2015, costs to fall, and adoption to rise substantially – and not just because we’re driven to make our households more efficient. There’s a reason why Google purchased Nest, the “learning thermostat” company, last January. When it comes to the “web of things” the bottom line is that people love their gadgets, perhaps even more than saving money.

Canada: Benchmarking buildings, pricing carbon

Closer to home, expect at least two Canadian municipalities in 2015 to embrace mandatory energy reporting for large public and commercial buildings, starting with Toronto. Mandatory reporting has been in place for several years now in a dozen or so U.S. jurisdictions, including New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., and is widespread in Europe. Evidence suggests it is quite effective at reducing the carbon footprint of a city’s building stock – on average, buildings see a 7 per cent annual reduction in energy use after three years. Also, expect Ontario to reveal details of plans to introduce a carbon tax in the province, a move that will stimulate province-led discussions of a national carbon pricing strategy. For a look at where Ontario may be heading, look to our January 22 issue of Corporate Knights.

And who knows? Perhaps in 2015 there will be a few black swans, such as bi-partisan support in the U.S. for a carbon tax. Pleasant surprises are always welcome.

The post Look ahead: What to expect in 2015 appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Sources: Indian Railways, Jetsolution International Services Ltd., Indonesian Motorcycle Industry Association, China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, ICRA, China Automobile Dealers Association, Tokyo Metropolitan Bureau of Transportation, Tokyo Metro, International Chamber of Commerce’s International Maritime Bureau.

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Rob Ford was the antithesis of an environmentalist. He never spoke of climate change or carbon emissions. The words “green energy” and “energy efficiency” weren’t in his vocabulary. When he talked about boosting public transit, it was in the context of improving life for people who drive. Indeed, he was determined to end what he called the “war on cars.”

I remember moderating a mayoral debate on the theme of “green government” during the 2010 campaign. Other than when he was slamming green energy for being too expensive – eliciting boos from the audience – Ford had this unique ability to not answer any of the questions directly or on theme. It was like we had four candidates seriously debating green issues and then, in the corner, was Rob Ford talking to himself about tax cuts and gravy trains.

Once Ford was elected, it was must have been a culture shock to bureaucrats who worked under previous environmentalist mayor David Miller, now chief executive of WWF Canada. Under Miller, Toronto became known internationally for its environmental leadership. Under Ford, Toronto became known internationally as the city with that crack-smoking, homophobic mayor that makes racial slurs.

A New Chapter

Now that John Tory is Toronto’s new mayor, what can we expect from him on the climate and environment file over the next four years?

For one, the words “environment” and “climate change” are again being spoken with what appears genuine concern and conviction. During his campaign, Tory talked about making Toronto a more sustainable community by boosting the city’s tree canopy by 3.8 million trees over the next 10 years. (Not to compare or anything, but motorcycle maker Harley-Davidson just revealed it aims to plant 50 million trees by 2025). Tory also wants to expand and improve maintenance of city parks, increase the number of green spaces, and revive the city’s 44,000-acre system of ravines – what he has referred to as hidden “crown jewels.” All welcome initiatives.

On energy, he has committed to creating a sustainable energy advisory board made up of local green energy, cleantech and sustainability leaders (Hey John, pick me, pick me!). The idea here is to get top advice on how to unlock energy efficiencies and where to embrace renewables as part of a plan to mitigate the city’s climate impacts. Toward that end, according to Tory’s environment policy, he would “work with other levels of government, partners and other jurisdictions on tackling climate change and its effects.”

One idea he has already put forth, long advocated by environmentalists, is the use of underutilized city assets and rights of way as locations for district thermal energy systems – e.g. geothermal, solar thermal or co-generation (biomass, natural gas). These systems could provide shared heating to buildings that are clustered closely together, and when developed across the city they would represent what Tory calls a “smart energy network.” It’s a more efficient way to supply heating, as countries such as Denmark have learned, and it has worked well in nearby communities such as Markham.

Also of particular interest is his plan to appoint an “environment advocate” for the city. This person’s job will be making sure environment policies are consistently applied – and coordinated – across all municipal departments, agencies, boards and commissions. The advocate will also have the task of developing a comprehensive climate adaptation plan for the city and its infrastructure, and a “realistic” and “achievable” plan to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions from municipal assets, improve waste diversion, and lower the amount of toxins released within city boundaries.

Best of all, progress on all of this is supposed to be documented in a “Sustainable City Report” to be released annually. Tory has promised to present this report himself to city stakeholders. It will be important to hold him to it.

Transit Challenges

It is on transit, however, that Tory has attracted the most attention – partly because there’s a big question mark over how he expects to pay for his plan, named SmartTrack. It targets the creation of a new 53-kilometre, 22-station aboveground subway service, one that would basically piggyback an existing regional rail corridor that is already targeted for electrification. He ambitiously claims he can get this ready within seven years, and that it would make it easier for people living in the suburbs – e.g. Markham, Scarborough, and northwest Etobicoke – to ditch their cars in favour of public transit.

Environmentalists like portions of Tory’s plan, but say it doesn’t go far enough. They preferred candidate Olivia Chow’s plan to significantly expand bus service, which would increase transit options to more areas and do it faster and at less cost. An open question is whether Chow’s approach would have reduced or led to more emissions compared to Tory’s plan, given that most Toronto buses run on diesel fuel.

Tory was also criticized by what some described as an unambitious plan to boost cycling infrastructure in the city. He called for more separated on-road bike lanes, more spaces to park bicycles, and more money for maintenance of existing lanes, but he didn’t provide a sense of how much he would expand the network.

Chow, on the other hand, pledged to create more than 200 kilometres of new bicycle lanes, which would roughly triple existing on-road lane infrastructure. True, Tory didn’t put a number on kilometres, but his openness to cycling as part of a strategy to reduce congestion and emissions is still a good sign. He can be pushed on this.

As a city cyclist, my own thought is that downtown Toronto is a chaotic, terrifying place to ride a bicycle. More separated bike lanes would help, but the real problem is rampant, uncoordinated condominium and road construction that gives little, if any, consideration to the impact on cyclists and their safety.

Creating a Smart City

Throughout his campaign, Tory spoke frequently about building intelligence into the way the city operates. He’s a big fan of intelligent building management systems, smart traffic management, and other technologies that collect and make sense of data that can reduce congestion, lower building energy costs and make the city, its residents and its businesses operate more efficiently. “Toronto should be at the forefront of the implementation of these technologies,” stated Tory’s economic plan, in which he outlined his intention to use the “market pull” of the city to turn Toronto into a global research and development hub for “smart city technology.”

One problem, in Tory’s opinion, is that the city hasn’t been taking advantage of the massive amounts of data it currently collects, most of which isn’t available to the public. He has cited that New York City releases 10 times more open data sets to the public compared to Toronto. “We should work to double the available data each year for the next 10 years until we are truly a global leader,” according to his economic plan.

The saying “you can’t improve what you don’t measure” is probably etched in Tory’s mind after his years as president and chief executive of Rogers Cable, where keeping the cable firm’s high-speed Internet service competitive with offerings from Bell Canada meant constant number crunching and analysis in search of efficiencies and a market edge. It’s why Tory plans to push for real-time energy monitoring for all municipal buildings, where he says he will find $22 million in annual savings by his fourth year in office. On top of that, “we will see additional new opportunities for energy retrofits, based on solid, real and measurable data.”

Unfortunately, Tory doesn’t appear ready to support a call for mandatory energy benchmarking of private commercial buildings, despite movement in this direction from city council staff and recommendations from the Toronto Atmospheric Fund. Tory feels private building owners and operators will do this voluntarily if the municipality itself shows leadership on its own buildings. This is highly doubtful. There’s a reason why cities such as New York, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. all require commercial buildings over a certain size to report their annual energy use, and that’s because most of them – especially the laggards – won’t do it voluntarily.

We’ve had voluntary reporting for a few years in Toronto and it can only go so far. For energy benchmarking to be truly effective as a way to find efficiencies, we need all commercial and public buildings of a certain size playing by the same rules. Here’s hoping Tory has a change of heart on this issue, and supports doing in Toronto what world-class cities south of the border are already doing, with great success.

Will He Deliver?

I know Tory reasonably well. As a technology and telecom reporter at the Toronto Star when Tory was CEO of Rogers Cable, I had many opportunities to chat with him. We kept in touch when he was leader of Ontario’s PC Party and later when he was talk show host for Toronto radio station CFRB 1010. He invited me on his show a few times to talk about energy and technology issues.

From these interactions, I can comfortably say one thing: Tory is not a No Man like Ford. He’s a consensus builder. He has opinions on various energy and environmental matters, but he isn’t dogmatic about it. He doesn’t like to throw money into a burning house. At the same time, he seems to keep an open mind, and is willing to change his position when he hears a sound argument for doing so. He’s a fiscal conservative, but he’s thoughtful enough about matters that he knows that solving social and environmental problems can’t always been done using Bay St. metrics. Sometimes situations call for patient capital. Sometimes payback can take several years. Tory appreciates this – it’s even an approach his former boss Ted Rogers took when building, at huge expense, the country’s first national mobile phone network.

This, in my view, is encouraging.

As one Toronto environmentalist told me, “Overall, this is a very solid opportunity that we should all jump on.”

We’ll learn more over the coming weeks and months. Exactly who he selects as his “environment advocate” will offer key insights, as well as who makes up his sustainable energy advisory board. Tory’s first-annual “Sustainable City Report” will tell us if he’s serious or not, as will his demonstrated willingness to push Toronto Hydro into moving more aggressively on conservation and district energy.

This editor will be watching closely.

The post Did Toronto just elect a green mayor? appeared first on Corporate Knights.

It was a historic night, with Wynne becoming the first openly gay premier elected in Canada. People simply liked the 61-year-old politician, a former community activist and school board trustee. They could connect with her. And despite attempts by opposition politicians to paint as reckless and expensive the Liberal government’s green power plan, anchored by its landmark Green Energy and Green Economy Act, voters seemed happy to stay the course rather than turn the ship around.

That Ontario’s electricity grid became coal-free in spring 2014 was symbolic of the progress made to date. Rather than coast on that accomplishment, however, Wynne is arguably accelerating the ship – at least with respect to tackling climate change, as demonstrated in her mandate letters to some cabinet ministers.

She instructed her economic development minister, Brad Duguid, to make infrastructure investments “ensuring resiliency to the impact of climate change.”

She directed her energy minister, Bob Chairelli, to make “co-ordinated efforts to improve energy efficiency and conservation, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, foster innovation in the energy sector,” and explore ways to import more zero-emission hydropower from neighbouring Quebec and Manitoba.

She also added “climate change” to the official title of environment minister, Glen Murray, who was ordered to develop a plan to reach the province’s 2020 greenhouse-gas emissions target of 15 per cent below 1990 levels, and craft a long-term climate change strategy that would guide the province into 2050. Toward that goal, Murray was told to work with other ministers in what Wynne described as an “all-of-government” approach to meeting emissions targets.

Investing in climate-friendly transportation infrastructure will no doubt be part of the solution, and on that front, Wynne’s support of Canada’s first green bond issuance demonstrated her willingness to test new approaches. This week, the province revealed that its first $500 million green bond offering was nearly five times oversubscribed. Investors from the United States, Europe, Asia, and Canada couldn’t get enough – a good sign that green bonds will be a permanent fixture in Ontario’s future.

Corporate Knights sat down with Wynne in early October to discuss her plans to put the province on a more environmentally sustainable path.

CK: What is your overall vision for “greening” Ontario?

WYNNE: I see us building on a foundation that we put in place over the last 10 years, such as shutting down the coal-fired plants and taking the equivalent of seven million cars off the road. Over 25 per cent of our greenhouse-gas emissions were from the coal-fired plants, so that’s a huge step forward. The introduction of new industries – solar and wind – again was a huge step. We need to continue to look for ways to reduce our emissions. The reason I put climate change in the environment minister’s mandate and into the name of his ministry is I want a climate change strategy – I want a mid-to-long term climate change strategy that will let us build on the foundation we have. We’re obviously not there; we still have lots to do. I guess if I had to articulate where I want Ontario to be in the context of the country, I want us to be leaders. I want to be able to demonstrate there is a way to be clean, green and sustainable, because it’s the right thing to do, but also because I don’t believe we have a choice. We all have to be part of the solution. Government has to take that leadership role.

CK: When the previous McGuinty government created the Green Energy and Green Economy Act, which subsequently spawned the province’s renewable feed-in-tariff (FIT) program, it seemed to focus more on boosting economic development and tackling urban smog. Climate change, while not ignored, was not emphasized as much and over time was discussed less and less. With you, it appears climate change is moving front and centre. What has changed in your view?

WYNNE: A couple of things have happened over the last 10 years. I think severe weather events have made it much clearer to people what it is we’re dealing with, even if you argue that there were events before 2003, which I think there were. It’s pretty irrefutable now that we better get our act together, and move as quickly as we can, and (Environment and Climate Change Minister) Glen Murray certainly feels this way.

CK: Can you explain the rationale behind your government’s recent issuance of green bonds? Do you expect more rounds down the road?

WYNNE: What is wonderful about the green bond idea is that it makes the link between building, building infrastructure and people making investment in a greener, more sustainable society. We need to do more of that. We need to do more to help people understand how we have to build protections for the environment into what we build. It’s not like we can go on building things and doing what we’ve always done for the last 50 years, and then we’ll deal with climate change later. It has to be integrated. So for me, what’s great about green bonds is it says, you know what, financial markets and investment are directly related to sustainability.

CK: Do you think citizens appreciate that link? It seems in the past, governments have tried to avoid drawing a direct line between a pool of funding and specific initiatives because it tied their hands. It also leaves them open to more scrutiny if the money doesn’t flow as promised.

WYNNE: I want to be subjected to that scrutiny. It’s why we are doing everything we can to be transparent. It’s why we released the mandate letters (to new ministers) publicly. I want to be held to the objectives we’ve put in place. If there’s something we can’t do, we have to explain why it didn’t happen. But I want to set those targets, and I want people to understand where we’re going and what our aspirations are. When you ask ‘Do the people understand that?” I don’t think we as a society have understood that. If we had, we would have built things differently, we would have had different energy policies, we would have had a different society. So we haven’t made those connections, and we’d better make them now.

CK: Ontario, since 2007, has talked openly about participating in a regional cap-and-trade program for greenhouse-gas emissions. It has been quiet on that front for the past few years. Is cap-and-trade, or some sort of carbon pricing, on your government’s agenda?

WYNNE: I’ve asked Glen (Murray) to put together a climate change strategy. What I can tell you is we know we have to take more action in terms of our greenhouse-gas emissions. Exactly how that will look, I don’t know. I’ve had a conversation with (Quebec Premier) Philippe Couillard and I know he’s moving very aggressively in terms of cap-and-trade and working with California. I don’t have the detailed answer for you at this point, but are we committed to taking the next step? Absolutely.

CK: Do you have a personal preference regarding carbon-pricing approaches?

WYNNE: I’m going to let that discussion unfold in the government. I think we are all in the discussion of carbon pricing. Even (Prime Minister) Stephen Harper, who doesn’t want to take clear action, is part of the discussion of carbon pricing whether he wants to be or not. It’s a survival question.

CK: Does it bother you that the federal government takes credit for the coal plant closures in Ontario as a sign of federal progress on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions?

WYNNE: It’s disingenuous. It’s political, because they don’t have anything else to talk about, really. But the reality is every premier across the country is thinking about the issue. Jim Prentice (the new Alberta Premier) is thinking about it vis-à-vis the oil sands. Christie Clarke (the B.C. Premier) is thinking about it, and she’s got a carbon tax in place already. Even if Stephen Harper doesn’t want to have the active discussion, all the premiers in this country are having this discussion, so de facto he’s part of it.

CK: With the coal-plant closures, Ontario can more credibly market itself as a clean energy economy. (Note: About 85 per cent of the electricity Ontario generated in 2013 could be characterized as emission-free). Is the province doing enough to promote itself as a place to build stuff with low-emission electricity?

WYNNE: I think there’s more we can do. Marketing ourselves as a clean energy jurisdiction is absolutely something that can be a selling point for us, and we haven’t done as much as we could.

CK: Following along that line of thinking, should the province be taking a more holistic approach to economic development by looking at energy, transportation and economic development in a more integrated way, rather than separately within the bureaucratic silos of each responsible ministry?

WYNNE: Absolutely. It’s one of the hardest things I have found in government – getting the walls between the ministries to be broken down, and having people work together. Again, that’s another reason the mandate letters (to ministers) were so important to me, because they all talk about working across ministries. And it’s not just about co-signing cabinet submissions, it’s about actually having officials and ministers work together and come up with solutions with the bureaucracy that are looking at a problem from different angles. I’m pushing very hard on that and it’s what I believe has to happen. I’m not coming at this saying do something I didn’t do myself. That’s actually how I worked as a minister. I know it can be done, but it takes political will. It takes the ministers to say, we’re going to sit at this table and have the conversation with all three ministries here and we’re going to come up with a combined solution. If that doesn’t happen, then it’s very hard for the bureaucracies to look sideways and see what their colleagues are doing.

The post A Wynne for the climate? appeared first on Corporate Knights.

What’s in that stink?

SC Johnson, the Wisconsin-based maker of household cleaning and air freshening products, said Thursday it would start disclosing the fragrance ingredients in specific products in spring 2015. The company, like many in the industry, does disclose overall ingredients but has not previously tied those ingredients to particular products. It will begin this new disclosure initiative in the United States and Canada, then Europe, starting with air care products and expanding from there into other categories. It may be the right thing to do, but it’s also a reaction to main competitor Clorox, which announced in late September it would start product-specific ingredient disclosure. It’s a big shift for the industry, which has historically been extremely secretive about fragrance ingredients.

Control of dot-eco domain goes to Canada

Corporate Knights reported Thursday that ICANN, the world’s Internet domain regulatory body, has given control of the new “dot-eco” top-level domain to a small Vancouver-based company called Big Room, which in its application had the backing of a global coalition of more than 50 environmental organizations. It took Big Room seven years, and a short-lived battle with another applicant backed by former U.S. vice-president Al Gore, to convince the regulator it would give the dot-eco domain a higher social purpose. The company hopes to have its dot-eco name registry operating sometime next year.

CK launches workplace safety web series

Visit corporateknights.com throughout the rest of October to follow our just-launched workplace safety web series, starting with today’s in-depth piece by award-winning journalist John Lorinc. In his story, Lorinc identifies fundamental shifts in our economy that are making traditionally low-risk, “safe” jobs – such as part-time retail and hotel service positions – more dangerous. The series is a partnership with the Canadian Society of Safety Engineering and the Center for Safety and Health Sustainability. Over the coming three weeks, we’ll also look at which industries are best and worst at disclosing workplace safety data, as well as the challenge of making sure safety standards trickle down through the supply chain. Another question we’ll answer: Why are injury claims in Canada’s east falling faster than in the west? Finally, we’ll end with a report on Canada’s latest worker safety data.

California tops at preparing for climate change

A new online tool developed by the Georgetown Climate Center lets users easily find out which U.S. states are making the most progress with climate adaptation and which ones are lagging behind. And, perhaps to no one’s surprise, California has come out on top, followed by Massachusetts and New York, reports Grist.org. This is exactly how Corporate Knights scored the Top 3 states in its Green Provinces and States ranking, which we released this past June. The difference is that instead of focusing on climate adaption plans, CK’s ranking scored states and provinces on 10 key performance indicators across six categories – air and climate, water, nature, transportation, waste, energy and buildings. We also had a 10-point bonus system that rewarded jurisdictions for having certain environmental programs in place. What’s interesting – and sad – about the Georgetown ranking is that just 14 out of 50 states have a finalized climate plan.

Tesla Unveils Powerful Model D

For all you Elon Musk fans out there, we would be remiss to not mention the unveiling yesterday of Tesla Motors’ new Model D electric car, or officially called the P85D. Wired.com is calling it Tesla’s “most powerful car ever.” That’s assuming, of course, you consider 0 to 60 miles per hour in 3.2 seconds fast. The Model D – basically a sportier, turbo-boosted version of the Model S – will also have all-wheel drive and an autopilot feature. “Tesla is adding a radar that can see through fog and snow; a camera with image recognition capability to spot traffic signs and lights, as well as pedestrians; 360-degree ultrasonic sonar; and a system that combines all the data those produce with navigation, GPS, and real-time traffic systems,” according to Wired.com.

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In the Ring of Fire, located in the most northern parts of Ontario, access is particularly challenging. Ice roads, increasingly unstable with the effects of climate warming, are often the only route for ground travel. Small propeller planes are a common mode of transportation, assuming the availability of sufficiently long runways or nearby lakes for take-off and landing.

Toronto-based Solar Ship has what it considers a better way, one that uses less or no fuel, can carry potentially larger weights and volumes, and which doesn’t need a runway to land – a clearing the size of a school soccer field will do just fine.

“It’s not about replacing current bush planes, it’s about complementing them,” says Jay Godsall, founder and chief executive of Solar Ship. “It’s about taking things they can’t take and delivering them to places they can’t go.”

Not quite an airship, not quite an airplane, Solar Ship’s unique vehicle is a hybrid of both. It’s a delta-shaped aircraft filled with helium, but slightly less than what airships use to lift themselves off the ground. Solar panels across the top of its body, backed up by a lightweight battery system, will supply enough power to drive it forward and into the air. In this way, the design achieves just the right balance of static lift (like a blimp) and aerodynamic lift (like a plane).

Because of the buoyancy it does have, it doesn’t require a lot of space to take off, and combined with its broad wingspan – which varies depending on the model – it can carry between 200 kilograms and several tonnes for thousands of kilometres. When the sun is shining, it needs remarkably little, if any fuel.

“Theoretically, we should be able to cut down on carbon emissions and costs a great deal,” Godsall says.

The Ring of Fire is a multibillion-dollar opportunity with the potential to create many thousands of jobs, he says. The problem is that communities in the area aren’t set up for that kind of rapid growth and activity, and they’re wary of the environmental consequences of that growth – what is often called “resource curse.”

It may be why Wasaya Airways, an aboriginal-owned airline based in Thunder Bay, and which pretty much has a monopoly on commercial air travel in the region, has signed a partnership agreement with Solar Ship.

“Their communities are going to be heavily impacted by this massive mining development in their backyard, and that will mean, at a primary economic level, just moving a lot more stuff in and out,” Godsall says. “But they have trouble with large volume payloads. How does someone pick up and deliver a pick-up truck, or 20-foot container, or on-site water purification system?”

Solar Ship has built a demonstration aircraft that will be hosted in Wasaya’s Thunder Bay hangars. It will be tested under a variety of conditions to determine whether it’s fit for the job. That being the case, Wasaya could end up being one of Solar Ship’s first customers.

Demo flights in the Ring of Fire will be “extremely powerful for us,” says Godsall. “If we can prove it there, we can prove it anywhere.”

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The vast mountain range that surrounds the city abounds with fast-moving water, and hydropower is far cheaper in Colombia than any other fuel source. So it just makes sense that the municipal government would want to swap expensive, polluting oil for streams of electrons in its transportation system.

Bogota already has one of the developing world’s most envied and widely copied public transport networks, centred on a 109-kilometre web of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) lines – dedicated bus lanes linking 125 rail-like stations and nine terminals. About 1.5 million passengers are carried between these stations and terminals every day.

The system traces its origins to a trailblazing decision made by charismatic mayor Enrique Penalosa when he took office in 1998. International experts advised the new mayor to build freeways to alleviate the fast-growing city’s mounting traffic woes. Instead, Penalosa opted to bet big on mass public transit and bike lanes.

Bogota lacked the funds for a subway system, so the city instead chose to borrow the BRT concept from Curitiba, Brazil. In a few short years, Penalosa broke the chokehold that the city’s notorious drug cartels had long maintained on the private bus networks and built a BRT system called TransMilenio. Almost overnight, it became a source of civic pride and an envy of cities across South America.

A key difference between subways and buses, however, is that while the former run almost exclusively on electricity, the latter almost never do. And so as Bogota unveiled ambitious plans this year to start running its BRT network on electricity and even introduce a citywide fleet of 20,000 electric-powered taxis – reducing operating costs and pollution in one grand gesture – it encountered a unique problem. Bogota wants to introduce 790 low-emission hybrid buses next year, and the city plans to entertain bids on a fully electric fleet and convert TransMilenio’s trunk lines exclusively to zero-emission vehicles as soon as possible. The trouble is, no one can readily fill the city’s order. “Producers,” said Susana Muhamad, secretary general, city of Bogota, “don’t have the capacity to meet the demand.”

There is a word, in business circles, for a burgeoning demand that far exceeds supply. That word is opportunity.

Muhamad outlined Bogota’s conundrum as she accepted a laurel in the “urban transportation” category at the inaugural C40 & Siemens City Climate Leadership Awards in London (disclosure: Siemens covered the cost of sending the author to this awards event). The C40 organization is a network of big city governments around the world, and Bogota bested projects based in wealthy First World cities (Stockholm and Paris) in its category. It also beat out Buenos Aires, which qualified as a finalist on the strength of a transportation system that copied Bogota’s own.

Bogota might not be a name closely associated with innovation north of the equator, but it has become a mobility model for the global south – and the supply gap it has encountered holds lessons for sustainable businesses around the world.

It’s taken for granted in urban design circles that cities are engines of innovation. From the agora of Athens to the bohemian coffee houses of Victorian London to the creative-class enclaves of the contemporary metropolis, the city has long been understood as a vital wellspring of new ideas and the primary generator of the intellectual capital that drives modern economies.

Perhaps it’s not surprising, then, that even a global-scale challenge like climate change has found some of its best ideas and most important innovations in cities. Indeed, the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group was itself born of a distinctly urban reluctance to wait on the decisions of higher levels of government.

The organization first came together in 2005 to share best urban practices in response to climate change, and in 2009 it staged a high-profile (and much more productive) alternative summit to the Copenhagen Climate Conference. The rural-urban balance tipped in favour of cities that same year – more than half of humanity now resides in cities, and 80 per cent of us will be urban dwellers by 2050 – and as most national governments continue to stumble in their flailing search for durable climate change solutions, urban leadership has never been more critical.

Which brings us back to Bogota, whose electric-bus problem is both a welcome model of innovation and an illustration of the city’s limits. Bogota’s TransMilenio is one of the most transformative and easily copied urban infrastructure inventions of the last decade. Though Curitiba’s BRT had been up and running in Brazil since 1974, it was the unprecedented boosts to commuter speed and passenger capacity of TransMilenio, rapidly deployed in the heart of a sprawling, traffic-choked metropolis in 2000, that launched the modern wave of BRTs.

The concept has since spread to 150 cities as far away as Jakarta and Johannesburg, and marks a rare case where industrialized cities – among them celebrated sustainability leaders such as Amsterdam, Melbourne and Vancouver – have widely adopted a developing country’s model. In Buenos Aires, a flagship BRT lane now carries 200,000 passengers per day down Avenida 9 de Julio, Argentina’s answer to the Champs-Elysees. The city’s C40 transportation initiatives borrow as heavily from Bogota as from famously livable Copenhagen.

The spurs to further innovation on Bogota’s streets are not strictly climate-related. In March 2012, riots erupted in the city over TransMilenio, with protestors demanding more affordable fares and a solution to the system’s chronic overcrowding. (Major TransMilenio stations are frequently so crowded at rush hour that passengers can’t even get off the buses, let alone make room for the waiting crowd to board.)

Efforts are already underway to reduce tariffs, and by switching from diesel engines to electric ones, the municipal government hopes to cut costs even further. But of course that goal would require manufacturers in distant lands, subject to national political and economic factors far beyond Bogota’s control, to step up their efforts to bring electric buses and taxis into mass production. Volvo has already tested hybrid buses on Bogota’s streets and the Chinese electric vehicle pioneer BYD has a handful of demonstration electric buses, and Bogota will start considering bids for the larger order next year. There’s no guarantee, however, that any manufacturer will be able to deliver what the city needs. In the meantime, Bogota’s commuters continue to pack into overcrowded stations as they wait for relief.

This is the flipside of the urbanization coin. As humanity crowds into cities, the opportunities for unexpected interactions yielding wild new ideas may well increase, but meanwhile city halls the world over are barely coping with the strain of rapid growth. And just as often as not, they are held back by limited municipal power structures set too low in an entirely different and less urban age.

In London, for example – birthplace of the C40 network under its founder, former mayor Ken Livingstone, and host of the City Climate Leadership Awards – a booming financial and cultural capital is struggling to expand its infrastructure to manage its current transport needs and anticipate the next phase of growth. “The transport system quite honestly is creaking at the seams,” said Jeremy Hinds of Network Rail, a lead partner in Thameslink, a multibillion-dollar commuter rail project.

Thameslink is a staggeringly large and complex undertaking – a new hub in the heart of London for one of the world’s densest and busiest rail networks. Designed to lash together a disjointed tangle of existing rail lines in the north and south and increase train traffic between them by 250 per cent at peak hours, the project has required 15 years in debate and planning and still has five more years of construction to go. Among other challenges, it has necessitated a major overhaul of London Bridge station while keeping it open and busy, as well as the laying of two new rail beds essentially on top of historic Borough Market.

By itself, Thameslink would be the transit project of a generation, but it’s but one piece of London’s transportation puzzle. Crossrail, an east-to-west sister project, comes with a £14.8-billion price tag, 21 kilometres of tunnel, and a radical expansion of Farringdon Station. London’s pioneering congestion charging and Low Emissions Zone systems, meanwhile, continue to grow – and grow in complexity – around the city. (The congestion charging system applies a levy to all vehicles entering central London during working hours, with the £150 million per year spent on public transit; the Low Emissions Zone is a restrictive tariff on large, exhaust-spewing vehicles across a larger patch of the city.) And municipal leaders are also calling for a second high-speed rail line to link London to Leeds, Birmingham and Manchester to the north – a project that has led to political squabbling over costs and benefits and that demonstrates the limits, even in London, to what a city can do on its own.

In her final book, Dark Age Ahead, the massively influential urban thinker Jane Jacobs talked about a concept she called “subsidiarity.” She defined it as “the principle that government works best – most responsibly and responsively – when it is closest to the people it serves and the needs it addresses.” The C40 network is a case study in the value of subsidiarity and its limits in the climate change era. The world over, cities have led the conversation on climate change and developed some of the most innovative strategies to tackle it.

Germany’s transformative national energy policy, the feed-in tariff for renewable energy, began as a municipal ordinance. Congestion charges – whether in London or Stockholm or Singapore – have proven to be among the most effective and efficient Pigovian taxes (i.e., taxes on negative externalities) yet created to put a clear and fair price on greenhouse gas emissions. And of course the C40 network is rife with examples of urban innovation, many of them finalists or winners in the first City Climate Leadership Awards.

Copenhagen is well on its way to a municipal target of carbon neutrality by 2025. Munich has concrete plans to become the first city of more than a million people to be powered entirely by renewable energy. San Francisco’s recycling program has as its goal nothing less than the obsolescence of the landfill itself. In Melbourne, 1,200 buildings in the downtown core will receive hyper-efficiency retrofits. In cities around the world, forward-thinking governments, spurred often as not by more immediate crises and exercising their intrinsic subsidiarity, have found their way to sustainable solutions to problems of energy use, transportation, air quality, resilience and waste.

In Bogota – as in so many cities – the traffic was a nightmare. The conventional wisdom said to build on-ramps, overpasses and freeways. Instead, the mayor created space on its streets for everything but cars – TransMilenio buses, yes, but also bicycles and pedestrians – and the city ignited a worldwide boom in a new system of transit.

That system is better positioned than any freeway ever will be to become the world’s first zero-emissions bus network. But it will need partners in industries far away to see the opportunity hidden in the urban chaos.

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