Press Releases
Greening Greater Toronto Celebrates Earth Day with Report on Progress in Making the GTA the Greenest City Region in North America
TORONTO, April 22, 2010 - In recognition of Earth Day, Greening Greater Toronto (GGT) is pleased to share its progress on realizing the vision of making the GTA the greenest city region in North America.
Launched in June 2008 by the Toronto City Summit Alliance (the Alliance), Greening Greater Toronto uniquely links the public, private and not-for-profit sectors to collectively find solutions that accelerate the greening process and reduce our environmental impact. It was created in response to the Alliance's 2007 Summit call for a regional environmental vision and plan that would build on the existing efforts and leadership of environmental organizations, governments, research institutions and businesses.
Greening Greater Toronto has launched three projects that were carefully chosen to target areas with the highest potential for improvement, and is looking at other areas to help make an impact. Here's an update on progress to date:
Commercial Building Energy Initiative
Objective: Overcome barriers to greater resource efficiency in the GTA's existing commercial building stock.
What's happening now: GGT has formed a Leadership Council with GTA tenants representing over 38 million ft2 of office space, and building owners representing over 40 per cent of GTA office space. The Council has committed to deliver four concrete actions for 2010 that centre on the broad promotion of the business case for commercial building energy efficiency initiatives, together with best practices and a practical toolkit:
Greening Canada Fund
Objective: Help organizations reduce their environmental footprints by investing in domestic emission reduction projects.
What's happening now: The Greening Canada Fund launched in September 2009, with BMO Financial Group and TD Bank Financial Group committing a total $13 million in investments.
These initial investments in the first-ever voluntary carbon emissions reduction fund aimed exclusively at large Canadian corporations will alone generate carbon offsets equivalent to taking 190,000 cars off the road for one year.
Green Power Action, the Fund Manager, is acquiring high quality carbon credits by assisting Canadian non-profit, public or quasi-public organizations to undertake GHG emissions reduction projects. The Fund Manager continues to meet with potential investors and sources of carbon emission offsets, and has already secured credits from projects including an energy efficiency initiative by a Quebec school board, a fuel switching project from an Ontario municipally-owned and operated district energy system, and an industrial process improvement project by a pulp and paper mill in Nova Scotia.
Green Procurement
Objective: Facilitate green procurement practices in organizations across the GTA to reduce waste, energy consumption and carbon emissions, and help drive the success of Ontario's green sector.
What's happening now: GGT has formed a Green Procurement Leadership Council, representing buyers with spending power of over $50 billion annually. The Council is committed to transforming procurement by promoting concrete actions that they and other organizations can pursue.
The Green Procurement Leadership Council has four programs now underway:
Get Involved - Since 2008, more than 170 partners from corporations, industry, government and the not-for-profit sector have joined forces to improve the environmental health and future of the GTA. For more information or to become a partner, please visit www.greeninggreatertoronto.ca.
About Toronto City Summit Alliance
Since its inception in 2002, The Toronto City Summit Alliance has developed and supported initiatives addressing issues critical to the future health and wealth of the Toronto region. The Alliance is a coalition of thousands of civic leaders in the Toronto region. The Alliance was formed to address challenges to the future of Toronto such as expanding knowledge-based industry, poor economic integration of immigrants, decaying infrastructure, and affordable housing. In 2003, the Alliance published Enough Talk: An Action Plan for the Toronto Region, focusing on issues where there was a clear consensus for action and where progress could be made quickly. Since publishing Enough Talk, the Alliance has advocated for its recommendations and worked with community partners and governments towards their implementation.
Launched in June 2008 by the Toronto City Summit Alliance (the Alliance), Greening Greater Toronto uniquely links the public, private and not-for-profit sectors to collectively find solutions that accelerate the greening process and reduce our environmental impact. It was created in response to the Alliance's 2007 Summit call for a regional environmental vision and plan that would build on the existing efforts and leadership of environmental organizations, governments, research institutions and businesses.
Greening Greater Toronto has launched three projects that were carefully chosen to target areas with the highest potential for improvement, and is looking at other areas to help make an impact. Here's an update on progress to date:
Commercial Building Energy Initiative
Objective: Overcome barriers to greater resource efficiency in the GTA's existing commercial building stock.
What's happening now: GGT has formed a Leadership Council with GTA tenants representing over 38 million ft2 of office space, and building owners representing over 40 per cent of GTA office space. The Council has committed to deliver four concrete actions for 2010 that centre on the broad promotion of the business case for commercial building energy efficiency initiatives, together with best practices and a practical toolkit:
- Building a "living library" catalogue of case studies and energy benchmarks to promote best-practices for energy efficiency;
- Giving tenants the tools and motivation to initiate energy efficiency projects, through a Greening our Workplaces Tenant Event Series;
- Helping to convene building owner/tenant working groups to jointly pursue energy efficiency steps in commercial buildings; and
- Launching a corporate challenge, in which Council members will commit to establishing baselines on energy use, track progress, and launch a challenge to the greater building community with agreed targets at the Alliance's February 2011 Summit.
Greening Canada Fund
Objective: Help organizations reduce their environmental footprints by investing in domestic emission reduction projects.
What's happening now: The Greening Canada Fund launched in September 2009, with BMO Financial Group and TD Bank Financial Group committing a total $13 million in investments.
These initial investments in the first-ever voluntary carbon emissions reduction fund aimed exclusively at large Canadian corporations will alone generate carbon offsets equivalent to taking 190,000 cars off the road for one year.
Green Power Action, the Fund Manager, is acquiring high quality carbon credits by assisting Canadian non-profit, public or quasi-public organizations to undertake GHG emissions reduction projects. The Fund Manager continues to meet with potential investors and sources of carbon emission offsets, and has already secured credits from projects including an energy efficiency initiative by a Quebec school board, a fuel switching project from an Ontario municipally-owned and operated district energy system, and an industrial process improvement project by a pulp and paper mill in Nova Scotia.
Green Procurement
Objective: Facilitate green procurement practices in organizations across the GTA to reduce waste, energy consumption and carbon emissions, and help drive the success of Ontario's green sector.
What's happening now: GGT has formed a Green Procurement Leadership Council, representing buyers with spending power of over $50 billion annually. The Council is committed to transforming procurement by promoting concrete actions that they and other organizations can pursue.
The Green Procurement Leadership Council has four programs now underway:
- Document Hub - An online portal for interested organizations to share green procurement-related documents securely and privately.
- Green Exchange - A series of boardroom discussions hosted by council members on specific procurement topics such as remote meeting technologies and lighting systems and controls, and increasing openness and dialogues between buyers and sellers of green products and services.
- Green Paper Group and other Action Groups - The Green Paper Group is working to increase the use and availability of paper with higher recycled fibre content and to reduce emissions produced from deliveries by batching orders. They are exploring other buying areas for additional action groups.
- Corporate Commitment - Council members are working together to set objectives relating to energy and resource consumption and emission generation to form the basis for a corporate commitment.
Get Involved - Since 2008, more than 170 partners from corporations, industry, government and the not-for-profit sector have joined forces to improve the environmental health and future of the GTA. For more information or to become a partner, please visit www.greeninggreatertoronto.ca.
About Toronto City Summit Alliance
Since its inception in 2002, The Toronto City Summit Alliance has developed and supported initiatives addressing issues critical to the future health and wealth of the Toronto region. The Alliance is a coalition of thousands of civic leaders in the Toronto region. The Alliance was formed to address challenges to the future of Toronto such as expanding knowledge-based industry, poor economic integration of immigrants, decaying infrastructure, and affordable housing. In 2003, the Alliance published Enough Talk: An Action Plan for the Toronto Region, focusing on issues where there was a clear consensus for action and where progress could be made quickly. Since publishing Enough Talk, the Alliance has advocated for its recommendations and worked with community partners and governments towards their implementation.
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