Toronto as a Living Planet City?

At the same time as we were developing the virtual Living Planet City, WWF-Canada was out interviewing experts, decision-makers and green energy practitioners across Canada to find out what could be done to move forward on this vision in our cities today.

We talked to dozens of people working with decentralized, green energy projects. We wanted to find out what barriers were impeding greater implementation of these energy solutions in the City of Toronto, and how the city and the province could remove those barriers in order to seize the many opportunities for distributed generation (DG), starting in the downtown core.

Read our full report, Distributed Generation in Toronto: A Stakeholder Survey of Barriers and Benefits, along with other related materials.

Why Toronto?

We picked Toronto because Canada's largest city is facing some real energy challenges over the coming decade - challenges that could be met with local, distributed, green energy solutions. As a Living Planet City, Toronto could not only meet these energy challenges, but also fulfill city council's goal of becoming the greenest city in Canada (although, of course, we encourage other communities to challenge them for that title).

Currently, Toronto has trouble getting enough power into the downtown area, which is being re-developed to add more housing and office space. There are two ways to fix this problem: build an expensive (and disruptive) new transmission line to the downtown, or implement a decentralized energy strategy.

The City of Toronto and Toronto Hydro have already taken significant measures to address barriers and incentives within their jurisdiction. Their goal is to accelerate energy efficiency and local energy generation from renewable sources as a means of meeting Toronto's climate and air quality targets. These include

• passing a by-law to enable green energy and district energy systems;
• the innovative Mayor's Tower Renewal Project that brings together energy efficiency with community revitalization;
• the Transit City plan that emphasizes the expansion of electrically-powered light rapid transit lines to better serve commuters;
• the Green Roofs bylaw; and
• the Live Green Toronto program

But, making the transition to a different kind of energy system will also require involvement of the provincial government. The Government of Ontario took a major step in this direction by passing a landmark Green Energy Act, but now needs to take the next step by crafting a Roadmap for Decentralized Generation, starting with downtown Toronto. Such a Roadmap can set Toronto and Ontario on the path to more decentralized energy and increased community energy planning and control.