The project goals were to develop an Embodied Carbon Management Toolkit for Ontario’s municipalities and support the development and implementation of embodied carbon management policies and practices across the province. Three working groups made up largely of City of Toronto staff were created focusing on 1) urban design guidelines, 2) building and infrastructure design and procurement of low-carbon materials, and 3) building demolition and deconstruction. These groups met quarterly and supported the development of a public-facing report recommending modifications to the City of Toronto’s demolition policies, procurement approach and urban design guidelines for Low, Mid, and High-rise buildings. The City held two workshops with representation from City staff, architects, developers, and construction and building services companies to share case study findings and an assessment of the existing policies, guidelines, and recommendations. Input gathered supported the development of the publicly available Embodied Carbon Management Toolkit designed to enable municipal planning and urban design staff to analyze building and infrastructure design and material changes required to advance low carbon construction in new projects (link to toolkit and summary recommendations). The toolkit has dozens of strategies for minimizing carbon through smarter urban design, circular construction, and setting low-carbon procurement requirements.
Two training workshops were held – one for City of Toronto staff with 61 participants, and the second for staff from other Ontario municipalities hosted by the Clean Air partnership and with 95 participants – and two implementation projects piloting the toolkit were completed, which provided feedback used to improve the toolkit. A briefing workshop for members of the design and construction community and staff in municipalities across Ontario was held in Oct 2024 with over 80 attendees present (YouTube link to recording).
The grantee reported that the project opened the discussion on how to address embodied carbon through numerous means to a broad audience. It led to many new connections and for projects to start thinking about how to minimize carbon through smarter urban design, circular construction, and setting low carbon procurement requirements.