Toronto announces new carbon budget process: What is it and how will it impact GHG emissions?

This month, Toronto City Council officially adopted the City’s 2025 budget, which included the development of a new carbon budget process for the first time. This represents a significant step forward in meeting the City’s climate and sustainability goals that will reduce carbon emissions by 244,615 tonnes per year once implemented. 

The new carbon budget process identifies and prioritizes opportunities for climate action investment. Not only does it aim to strengthen city-wide climate resilience, it also creates more transparency around the funding (or in some cases lack there-of) on various climate-related projects. This represents $2 billion in new investments that will be made through 31 new or enhanced climate actions; these were selected using an evaluation process based on carbon impact, co-benefit potential, and estimated associated costs among other criteria. Notable climate investments advanced through the carbon budget process can be viewed here.

Though it does not guarantee an adequate level of investment against our cascading climate crisis, this new carbon budget process establishes the foundation, improving the city’s budget and climate actions, and developing a roadmap that can essentially be used for long-term planning to achieve net-zero emissions. This process is crucial as it helps to align emissions reduction goals with recent climate science, it increases accountability, and it encourages policies and regulations to be updated to keep carbon emissions within the budget. By holding the city accountable, this new carbon budget will help Toronto to cut GHG emissions and transform global climate and sustainability targets into real science-driven actions.

Written by Sabrina Careri, for Ann Dale.