The city has indefinitely shelved a plan to tackle its biggest source of carbon emissions and said that Toronto will not meet its nearest targets to battle the climate crisis.
Officials were expected to release a proposal this week that would detail plans, years in the making, to set emissions targets for existing buildings in Toronto. Buildings, and the natural gas used to heat them, are Toronto's top source of planet-warming greenhouse gases, contributing more than half of the city's annual total, according to recent accounting.
Instead, city staff said in a report that the plan, known as the Building Emissions Performance Standards, would not be presented for consideration at all. The report said the decision was prompted by provincial, national, and global decisions that had stymied climate action, and by Toronto council's questions about affordability and economic concerns.
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Staff now say they will "review opportunities to address these challenges" and seek council's direction. The report will be considered as part of an update on the city's climate strategy, TransformTO, at committee next week, and debated at council next month.
While deep cuts to carbon emissions are a shared responsibility, "there is a lot that cities can do," said Bryan Purcell, vice-president of policy and programs at The Atmospheric Fund (TAF), a non-profit regional climate agency.
"I think climate leadership means when other levels of government step back, climate leaders need to step forward and sustain the momentum."
In the report, the city pointed fingers at multiple jurisdictions and policies: the federal government for cancelling the consumer carbon price and ending popular home retrofit programs, the province for passing legislation it said challenged "the ability of municipalities to implement climate-positive programs," and U.S. government's tariffs.
Those actions are "unfortunate," said How-Sen Chong, a climate campaigner for the Toronto Environmental Alliance and a member of the city's climate advisory group.
"It is also important to note that the city does have impactful tools available that are under development to actually help at least bridge the gap. And one of those is missing from this report, which is the Building Emissions Performance Standard."
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Purcell described the now-backburnered building performance proposal as modest: 85 per cent of buildings already met the requirements, he said, and the poorer-performing buildings that didn't would see cuts to energy bills and improvements in comfort and quality of life for tenants and residents. Requirements would only start being phased in starting in 2030. The first stages would set requirements for large commercial buildings and later for multi-unit residential buildings; single family homes were not included.
Purcell added that TAF, along with representatives from the real estate industry, utilities, and community groups, had spent years consulting on the plan, putting in "a lot of time and effort."
The staff report also stated definitively that the city will not achieve its near-term climate goals in 2025 or 2030, which would not come as a surprise for anyone tracking Toronto's latest emissions reports. A TAF inventory released last week found that emissions across the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area had gone up for a fourth year in a row, missing the large annual reductions necessary to meet those targets.
Toronto's ambitious goal of reaching net zero by 2040 is also in doubt, the report suggested. Modelling shows that when only considering city-led policies, "a significant gap" remains between business-as-usual and the level of reductions necessary to meet that target.
"We remain committed towards meeting Toronto's ambitious climate goals, while navigating current economic pressures and policy changes across all levels of government," James Nowlan, the city's executive director of environment, climate and forestry said in a statement, citing 17 "climate actions" listed in the net-zero strategy plan.
"The City is also calling on long-term funding, policy and program supports from other levels of government to fully achieve net zero emissions by 2040."