After years of ignoring the City’s green priorities, Mayor Patrick Brown and council risk missing critical emissions targets 

At a time when the impacts of climate change are hitting local residents harder than ever—from the startling health effects of heat domes hanging hot and heavy over the municipality, to flood damage and its increased financial stress—the failure of Mayor Patrick Brown and local elected officials to take the climate crisis seriously is becoming more apparent than ever.

After six years of Brown at the helm, the City has slipped further away from reaching its critical greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets. A presentation in June to Brampton’s Environmental Advisory Committee made this abundantly clear. 

The presentation, from Christopher Hong, Project Manager, and Kayden Toffolo, Engineering Intern, at WalterFedy, revealed the City’s corporate greenhouse gas emissions are 1.7 percent higher than they were in 2010. With only six years left for Brampton to achieve a 45 percent reduction in emissions below 2010 levels by 2030, the City is going in the wrong direction.

It’s a situation not unique to Brampton. 

According to the 2023 Emissions Gap Report, released annually by the United Nations Environment Programme, greenhouse gas emissions increased 1.2 percent globally in 2022, reaching a new record high of 57.4 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, making a full rebound from the dip of the COVID-19 pandemic. The report found, most concerningly, that “none of the G20 members are currently reducing emissions at a pace consistent with meeting their net-zero targets”.

Locally, The Atmospheric Fund’s annual Carbon Emissions Inventory found that emissions shot up eight percent across the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area in 2022, nearly rebounding to pre-pandemic levels, and the highest year-over-year increase the organization has seen since it began its reporting in 2015. 

“Every year that we don't get emissions moving downwards means that in order to reach our climate targets, we need even more ambitious action in the years ahead,” Bryan Purcell, vice president of policy and programs at TAF, previously told The Pointer.

The struggle for Brampton is twofold. The first element is Brampton’s rapid growth. The consultants illustrated how if the city were the same size it was in 2010, with the same buildings and infrastructure, it would have seen an emissions reduction of nearly 25 percent. It means the city has done work to make its buildings more sustainable since that time. However, all of this progress has been lost by the lack of attention paid by elected officials and staff to ensuring new builds are sustainable from outset. 

Committee member Sherry-Ann Ram questioned the consultants on how the City can get ahead of the constant growth it is experiencing. As the City expands, it means more cars and more homes, and therefore increased emissions. Between 2021 and 2051, it’s projected the City of Brampton’s population will increase by 41 percent, or nearly 290,000 people. 

This is why the City needs to prioritize ensuring new builds are as close to net zero as possible, Toffolo said.

“If you can get to a point where anything that you're building new is not adding to the GHG emissions, then you can ensure that even as you're growing, you don't have to worry about adding GHG emissions to the portfolio,” she explained.

In the short term, Toffolo said the City needs to focus on low cost/high reward initiatives, which include things like lighting upgrades, HVAC optimization measures and retrofit studies.

Some of this work is already underway. The Susan Fennell Sportsplex, located at McLaughlin Road and Ray Lawson Boulevard, in the southwest corner of Brampton, is anticipated to be the first zero carbon facility in the City. Built in 1996, many parts of the aging building need to be replaced, which is an ideal opportunity for energy retrofitting. According to a press release from the City, these retrofits include electrifying all the facility’s gas-powered equipment, installing a geothermal system, upgrading the ice rink refrigeration plants, and installing air handling units, heat pumps and sustainable lighting. Work on these retrofits began in the second quarter of 2024 and is anticipated to be completed by the fourth quarter of 2025. The work is projected to cut emissions from the facility by 91 percent.

Tofollo encouraged the City to begin looking towards longer term measures, including widespread lighting or HVAC optimizations, the transformation from HVAC and hot water systems to heat pumps, the addition of solar panels, electrifying any gas-fired equipment, and the development of a new build policy that demands any new construction be net zero or near net zero.

It requires dedicated political will to address the challenge, something Brampton has not seen since Mayor Brown was elected in 2018. 

Brown has repeatedly stripped funds from environmental initiatives, which were already severely lacking at the City. 

The City implemented its Grow Green Environmental Master Plan (EMP) in 2014, keeping in line with other municipalities that were beginning to take the climate crisis seriously. But at the plan’s first update in 2020, the City had failed to reach the majority of its goals and was only on track for three of 20. 

Transit trips and natural heritage restoration for the community and City were the only three goals that were on track in 2020. Otherwise, the City could not point to any concrete action except for some educational campaigns. While education is incredibly important and powerful, it has little impact on things like emissions reductions unless it is followed by concrete action.

The EMP also shows how both staff and community participation in environmental initiatives drastically decreased between 2014 and 2019. This drop in participation is blamed on the ending of two City programs: Brampton Clean City and the Smart Commute Brampton-Caledon initiative. 

Instead of creating new programs to incentivize involvement, Brown continued to cut spending on environmental initiatives from successive budgets in order to deliver promised tax freezes to residents. In the 2022 capital budget, Brown allocated more funds for a single road than every environmental initiative combined. In 2023, the budget exposed many more empty climate change promises. 

Mayor Patrick Brown has repeatedly cut environmental spending in the City of Brampton since he was elected in 2018.

(City of Brampton)

The only concrete environmental initiative that the City is standing behind is its promise to construct the Etobicoke Creek Riverwalk which will decrease flood potential in the downtown, and provide new parks and greenspace. 

In November 2020, the Government of Canada committed $38.8 million toward the project and the City of Brampton is committing $58.2 million. This funding only relates to the flood mitigation aspects of the work. Revitalizing the corridor into the inviting greenspace displayed in the numerous renderings shared by the City will cost millions more according to previous estimates. There is no indication of where this money will come from or how Brampton plans to pay for it should government funding not materialize.

Brown has also repeatedly declared that the City is the first to establish green transit; however, other than an initial grant from upper levels of government to study the impacts of electric buses on the City’s transit system, it has put none of its own funds into the acquisition of these vehicles. Earlier this year the City was presented with a robust strategy to rapidly decrease emissions from its transportation sector, but it is unclear whether the City will take it.

While the City fails to take action on measures within its own control, two high order proposals have the potential to dramatically increase pollution and emissions across Brampton, making it even more difficult to reach its already weak targets. 

Capital Power wants to expand the Goreway Gas Plant, located in Brampton, by 40 megawatts, adding to the 875 megawatt facility. Capital Power states the expansion is necessary to meet growing electricity demand projected for Ontario and claims that advancements in technology and efficiencies will decrease emissions output. But with the total increase in energy output, even if the amount of emissions per unit of electricity produced decreases, the plant’s emissions will still increase 3.2 percent, to an average total of 1.4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent each year. 

Approximately seven kilometres southwest, Energy From Waste has made a bid to the provincial government to allow its for-profit incineration facility in south Bramalea, one of the biggest in Canada, to expand to more than quadruple its current capacity.

The analysis by WalterFedy determined that by 2029, with a determined effort, the City of Brampton will be able to see a three percent reduction in emissions below 2010 levels—a fraction of its 45 percent goal—but that by 2050 this could reach 97 percent. The residual emissions, the report concludes, can be accounted for by purchasing offsets.

Some members of the committee expressed concern with the type of offsets that the City would be purchasing. While offsets provide an excellent opportunity to deal with residual emissions, the committee wanted to ensure that the City would not take this as an opportunity to slow progress on its own green transition, and ensure that the offsets that were purchased were valid.

Toffolo said that as of right now, the consultants have only looked at offsets in general to determine costs, but no specific offsets are being recommended to the City at this time.

Email: [email protected]

Twitter: @rachelnadia_

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