Type of initiative: Incentives and Green Procurement
Population: 1.6 M city / 3.6 M metropolitan area
Montreal has a highly diversified economy, befitting its status as a major manufacturing center and shipping hub.
Its Energy Fund finances energy-efficiency projects within the municipal corporation.
In 2005, the City of Montréal began work on the Corporate Action Plan “For Preserving the Climate” (Plan d'action corporatif “Pour préserver le climat”) with the aim of reducing the City's corporate greenhouse gas emissions to 20% below 2002 levels by 2012. The City carried out a greenhouse gas inventory to help establish the plan's priorities and, subsequently, to devise a set of specific actions. The plan was adopted by the Executive Committee of the Montreal City Council in 2007.
The plan has several innovative features. For example, it calls for the use of a set of performance indicators that are to be used to hold participating municipal departments (i.e., boroughs and divisions of the central administration) accountable to the City Council. The Plan has also called for the creation of the first municipal energy fund in Quebec, designed to help finance energy efficiency projects within the municipal corporation. Another important initiative is the creation of an internal website that encourages capacity building and information sharing among the different stakeholders.
The City's Infrastructure, Transport and Environment Service (Service des infrastructures, transport et environnement or SITE) was responsible for developing the Action Plan. The same administrative body is now overseeing the implementation of the plan and is responsible for managing the Energy Fund and the website. However, the responsibility for implementing the plan's individual actions will be shared by several municipal departments.
As the plan was only recently adopted, there is a dearth of quantitative information on outcomes. The City reports that GHG emissions from corporate operations have diminished over the past year by about 2%. Qualitative outcomes resulting from this initiative are a greener corporate image for the City of Montreal and the creation of successful partnerships between stakeholders involved.
One factor that facilitated the development of the Action Plan was the strong support from City Council. The adoption of the resolution to reduce the City's GHG emissions in November 2005 and the Mayor's speech during the 11th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP11) are two events that helped to legitimize and provide a considerable impetus for the whole Action Plan process. The high level of cooperation between SITE and the various participating departments can also be considered as a success factor. Interdepartmental cooperation has helped to overcome one of the Action Plan's greatest challenges – the fragmented and decentralized nature of the municipal administration.
The City of Montreal is located on an island in the St-Lawrence River, in southwestern Quebec. The City, having a 2006 Census population of 1,620,693, is the largest of 16 municipalities on the Island of Montreal. This is by far the largest municipal population in Quebec and the second largest in Canada, after Toronto. Altogether, the municipalities of the Island of Montreal have 1,854,442 residents, whereas the metropolitan region has 3,635,571 residents.
The City of Montreal municipal corporation is a made up of a central administration and 19 borough administrations. The central administration is responsible for a number of island-wide services – i.e., services for the 19 boroughs of the City of Montreal itself plus the 15 remaining municipalities on the Island of Montreal.1 Island-wide services include urban development, public safety, public transportation, and the environment. The boroughs, which have their own mayors and councils, are responsible for waste collection, road maintenance, zoning, parks, culture, and other local matters.
During the 2002 Montreal Summit (Sommet de Montréal), the City announced its commitment to protecting the environment. Three years later, in April 2005, Montréal adopted its First Strategic Plan for Sustainable Development (Premier plan stratégique pour le développement durable). This five-year plan includes 36 concrete actions, of which nine are directly related to improving air quality and reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (City of Montreal, 2005). Seven months later, in November 2005, as Montreal was about to host the 11th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP11), the municipal administration adopted a resolution to reduce its corporate GHG emissions to 20% below 2002 levels by 2012.
At about the same time, the City Council ordered the Infrastructure, Transport and Environment Service (Service des infrastructures, transport et environnement or SITE) to begin work on a corporate action plan to reduce GHGs emitted from municipal operations.2 The first step in the development of the Plan d'action corporatif “Pour préserver le climat” (Corporate Action Plan “For Preserving the Climate”, referred to here as the Action Plan) was to produce a corporate GHG inventory.3 Once completed, the inventory was used to determine the Action Plan's priorities and to devise a set of actions to meet the 2012 emissions target.
The inventory – which was published in 2007 – shows that in 2002, the Montréal agglomeration emitted 196 kilotons of CO2; in 2003, 204 kilotons of CO2; and in 2004, 189 kilotons of CO2 (City of Montreal, 2007b).4 Of those emissions, 35.8% came from municipal buildings, 27.5% from the municipal fleet; and 20% from the wastewater treatment plant (see Figure 1).
Figure 1 : GHG emissions per activity sector
Source : Inventaire corporatif des gaz à effet de serre
2002-2004. Agglomération de Montréal
The main energy source responsible for most of the GHG emissions (41% of the total) was natural gas (see Figure 22). Based on the inventory, it was concluded that the best way to reduce the City's GHG emissions would be to invest in energy efficiency, especially in municipal buildings and vehicles (City of Montreal, 2007c).
Figure 2 : GHG emissions per energy source
Source : Inventaire corporatif des gaz à effet de serre 2002-2004.
Agglomération de Montréal
Internal stakeholders, such as the police and fire departments, the wastewater treatment plant, and various agencies and departments, were consulted by SITE officials before they drafted the Action Plan. According to City officials, this obviated any surprises when the plan was published and resulted in a high level of cooperation towards achieving the plan's goals. As the Action Plan is a corporate initiative that affects only the internal operations of the City of Montreal, public awareness of the plan is limited. No public consultations took place in the process of developing the corporate Action Plan. The plan was adopted by the Executive Committee of City Council in 2007.
1 Between January 1st 2002 and January 1st 2006, all the island municipalities and boroughs were merged together to create one single municipality. On January 1st 2006, however, 16 cities were reconstituted and demerged from Montreal.
2 The corporate Action Plan covers all municipalities and boroughs in the Montreal agglomeration.
3 The 2002-2004 corporate inventory covered 27 boroughs (including the merged cities at that time), the police and fire departments, the museums complex, the water filtration and wastewater treatment plants, the landfill Complexe Environnemental St-Michel and some other central services.
4 It is important to note here that these numbers represent only 1.4% of the GHG emissions for the entire Montréal community.
The Action Plan focuses on the two principal sources of GHG emissions from City operations, namely municipal buildings and vehicles. Among the twelve actions that it proposes, five pertain to municipal buildings and four others pertain to the municipal fleet. The three remaining actions are intended to provide technical and financial tools to the municipal departments involved. The actions were chosen so as to achieve the maximum impact on GHG emissions at the lowest cost.
The 12 actions listed in the Corporate Action Plan (City of Montreal, 2007c) include:
Montréal is not the first city to adopt an action plan to reduce GHG emissions and increase energy efficiency. However, Montreal's Action Plan has some unique features. First of all, the Action Plan has established three performance indicators to help measure progress. These include: (1) energy efficiency in municipal buildings – the average energy consumption per building type; (2) buildings temperatures – the average temperature in different building types during day and night operations as compared to specific norms to determine whether buildings are being operated in an energy efficient way; and (3) CO2 emissions per volume of potable water processed by the City's filtration plants. Together, these performance indicators allow the City to track the impact of measures taken and to calculate which actions are most effective in terms of the amount of GHGs avoided or energy saved (City of Montreal, 2007c).
The second innovative aspect of the Action Plan is the creation of the Energy Fund. Montréal is the first city in Québec to put into place such a fund, which will be used to finance the installation of passive solar heating, the development of renewable energy projects and the replacement of oil furnaces. Once the initial investment by the municipal government is made, the Fund will sustain itself through returns on energy efficiency investments and subsidies from external sources (i.e., energy efficiency grants and incentives). On a $10.7 million municipal investment over a six-year period, the Fund is expected to generate $24.4 million in total investment, assuming that 20% of the municipal spending will be matched by external sources and a seven year average repayment period (see Table 1) (City of Montreal, 2007c).
Table 1 : Energy Fund (in millions of dollars)
| Year | Investment |
Reinvestment |
Subsidies |
Return on investment |
Total Investment |
1 |
3.0 |
0.0 |
0.8 |
0.4 |
3.8 |
2 |
2.7 |
0.4 |
0.8 |
0.9 |
3.9 |
3 |
2.0 |
0.9 |
0.7 |
1.3 |
3.6 |
4 |
1.5 |
1.3 |
0.7 |
1.7 |
3.5 |
5 |
1 |
1.7 |
0.7 |
2.1 |
3.4 |
6 |
0.5 |
2.1 |
0.6 |
2.4 |
3.2 |
7 |
0 |
2.4 |
0.6 |
2.8 |
3.0 |
TOTAL $ |
10.7 |
8.8 |
4.9 |
11.6 |
24.4 |
Source: Plan d'Action Corporatif “Pour préserver le climat” 2007.
The third innovative aspect of the Action Plan is the internal Energy website to encourage information sharing among the different participating municipal departments. The City of Montreal has a very decentralized administration, making information sharing quite challenging. The intranet project is intended to help overcome this structural problem, reducing duplication between departments and helping to save staff time. Using the website, officials involved in energy management will be able to share information and experiences with respect to managing energy use and to help identify and locate expertise on specific matters within the administration. Tendering calls on upcoming projects as well as technical and financial reports on existing energy-related initiatives will also be found on-line (City of Montreal, 2007c).
The responsibility for managing and implementing different aspects of the Action Plan is distributed among a number of stakeholders within the municipal corporation. General oversight and coordination, as well as the intranet portal and administration of the Energy Fund, is the responsibility of SITE. The plan's other actions are to be carried out by the relevant department or service, with SITE acting as a facilitator in most cases. For example, the Municipal Building Directorate is proceeding with the installation of solar walls. In this case, SITE researches the different technology providers, administers the project, and seeks external funding whereas the Municipal Building Directorate oversees the actual installation of the solar walls on the buildings.
5 A solar wall is a passive solar collector which is installed as a building cladding and that heats the building's ventilation intake air.
6 Muséums Nature Montréal is a system of four educational facilities including the Biodome, the Botanical Garden, the Insectarium, and the Planetarium.
Montreal's corporate Action Plan flowed from the more global First Strategic Plan for Sustainable Development, which the City adopted in 2005. The Action Plan is therefore considered part of the larger effort by the City of Montreal to achieve more sustainable development.
Montreal is also part of the Partners for Climate Protection program, put forward by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. This partnership provides funding opportunities for the different actions found in the Action Plan, but, according to City officials, is also useful for benchmarking, networking and as a source of information on municipal initiatives elsewhere in Canada.
Approximately 1.5 staff members at SITE worked two years to produce both the GHG inventory and the Action Plan. Now that most of the development work is done, City officials estimate that one-quarter of a staff position is necessary to administer and coordinate the plan, including management of the Energy Fund and the intranet project. Work on updating the GHG inventory will require between one and six months of full-time work, depending on data availability.
To get the Energy Fund going and to achieve the expected total investment results (see Table 1), an estimated municipal investment of $10.7 million over a six year period is required. This estimate assumes a contribution of $5 million from different federal and provincial programs (such as the ecoENERGY program7 by Natural Resources Canada) and the energy utilities (such as the Energy Efficiency Fund8 by Gaz Métro). Combined, these investments should ultimately generate savings of $5 million in energy costs per year. So far, the administration has invested $2 million in the Fund.
As mentioned in the Policy Section, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, through its Partners for Climate Protection (PCP) program, acts as a financial partner as well: 50% of Action 3 is to be financed by the PCP program, for example (City of Montreal, 2007c).
Some of the actions put forth in the Plan, such as the adoption of a green policy for the municipal fleet (Action 12) or the use of gasoline blended with 5% ethanol (Action 11), will require no new investments from the Energy Fund as they were already under way before the adoption of the Action Plan, or because their financing is already covered by other programs or departments.
7 The ecoENERGY for Renewable Heat program is a four year investment to : increase the use of renewable thermal energy by industry, commercial businesses and public institutions, boost the amount of renewable thermal energy created for these sectors and contribute to cleaner air.
8 This fund offers innovative solutions to save on energy consumption while contributing to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions
Due to the recent adoption of the Action Plan (in 2007), there are as of yet few quantified outcomes. Nonetheless, the City reports that GHG emissions from corporate operations have diminished over the past year by about 2%. This result is consistent with the City's goal of reducing emissions by 20% over ten years (2002-2012).
No global figures on energy savings, GHG emission reductions, and cost savings already achieved through the application of the plan are available. However, some information is available on individual initiatives. For example, retrofitting the gas burners at the water treatment plant has allowed a reduction of 2000 tons CO2 per year and cost savings of $150,000 per year. Other actions have only just been initiated but are expected to have positive outcomes over the coming four years. For example, the solar heating projects should allow reductions of 350 tons CO2 per year, and $0.2 million in savings per year, the creation of an energy efficiency plan for the Muséums Nature Montréal should allow reductions of 2750 tons CO2 per year and annual saving of $1 million; the anti-idling campaign should allow reductions of 200 tons CO2 per year and $70,000 in annual savings; the energy efficiency procurement policy for police vehicles should allow reductions of 1200 tons CO2 per year, and $0.42 million in savings; the use of gasoline blended with 5% ethanol should allow reductions of 1200 tons CO2 per year; whereas the adoption of a green policy for the municipal fleet should allow a reduction of 3,000 tons CO2 per year, and $1.05 million in annual savings (City of Montreal, 2007c).
On the political front, the main outcome is a greener corporate image for the City of Montreal. The Action Plan has shown that the City is willing to lead by example. As emissions from the municipal corporation represent only 1.4% of the total emissions from the Island of Montreal, significant reductions will eventually have to come from other sectors – such as in the transport, private, commercial and residential sectors – if significant cuts in GHG emissions are desired on a community-wide scale. It is hoped that leadership from the City will help inspire action elsewhere.
Another positive outcome, according to City officials, is the fostering of productive partnerships during the development of the Action Plan. SITE worked in close collaboration with several municipal agencies during the development of the GHG inventory and the Action Plan; these partnerships continue now that the Action Plan has come into force, as SITE acts as the coordinating body. The success of one such partnership was recognized through the 2007 Energia Prize9, awarded jointly to SITE and the wastewater treatment plant for the gas burners retrofit project (AQME, 2007).
Although the Action Plan appears to be putting Montreal on the road to energy and cost savings as well as GHG emission reductions, it is important to keep in mind that some progress had already been made prior to the Action Plan. Moreover, some of the plan's actions – such as the use of 5% ethanol blended fuel and the elimination of ozone depleting refrigerants – were actions that the City would have had to take eventually, as both have been mandated by provincial and international law respectively; the fuel distributors have until 2012 to comply with the 5% ethanol blended fuel law and refrigerant users and fabricants have until 2010 to comply with the elimination of ozone depleting substances.
9 The Energia Prize is an annual award by the Quebec Association for the mastery of energy (AQME for its French acronym) for innovative energy projects in different sectors.
One factor that facilitated the development of the Action Plan was the strong support it received from City Council. The adoption of the November 2005 resolution to reduce the City's GHG emissions, and Mayor Gérald Tremblay's speech during COP11 are two events that helped to legitimize and provide impetus for the whole Action Plan process.
A factor that is expected to contribute to the Action Plan's successful implementation is the energy auditing that is now taking place in order to update the GHG inventory. Before the development of the GHG inventory, the energy bills paid for each municipal building by the individual boroughs and administrative divisions were not accounted for centrally. Now, with a centralized energy audit, it is possible to compare energy consumption among different buildings, boroughs, and departments and, consequently, to spot those who are making progress in improving energy efficiency and those who are not. The dissemination of such information, City officials believe, will motivate stragglers to reinforce their energy saving efforts. The various departments' willingness to collaborate with SITE can also be considered as a success factor. If SITE staff had not established good working relationships with other departments during the development of the Action Plan, its current implementation would have been jeopardized. Cooperation with external stakeholders is also imperative; they provide much-needed external funding, essential to the functioning of the Energy Fund.
One of the challenges that had to be addressed in developing the Action Plan, according to one of the interviewed City officials, is the fragmented and decentralized nature of the municipal administration. As previously mentioned, the central administration is responsible for some services on the Island of Montreal as a whole, covering not only the City of Montreal and its 19 boroughs, but also 15 suburban municipalities. The drafters of the Action Plan overcame this challenge by involving the many stakeholders in its development. This collaborative approach allowed the stakeholders to move beyond their silos in the decentralized administrative structure. Nevertheless, it remains to be seen whether the fragmented nature of municipal governance on the Island of Montreal will undermine the realization of some of the Action Plan's objectives.
While the involvement of numerous City departments in its development has overall been a boon for the plan, SITE's decision to consult with each partner individually in preparing the plan slowed the process considerably. One of the interviewed officials suggested that a more efficient way to proceed might have been to group certain stakeholders together for consultation purposes.
This type of initiative – the adoption of a corporate climate action plan – could be transferred to any type of city in North America, as long as the political will and a certain degree of environmental awareness among city officials is present. In Montreal's case, to facilitate the adoption of such a plan, the Action Plan's drafters emphasized the rapid return on investment yielded by new energy projects and the overall financial benefits of carrying out such projects. Officials in other municipalities may find it useful to emulate Montreal's emphasis on the financial benefits when arguing for the adoption of a similar initiative.
Certain specifics of Montreal's Action Plan are not necessarily transferable to all municipalities. For example, the development of an internal website to help coordinate the implementation of the Action Plan is a response to the sheer size and complexity of Montreal's administration. For municipalities with smaller and more centralized administrations, the expense and effort of such a communication tool may not be justified.
The City intends to carry out a corporate GHG inventory every year until 2012 and will use the information gathered to inform decisions concerning the Action Plan after 2012. In the meantime, the City is planning to develop an action plan to reduce GHG emissions from all sources on the Island of Montreal – i.e., not just from the municipal corporation. Several sectors are to be integrated in the future action plan, including the commercial, residential, and industrial sectors. The experience gained from developing and implementing the corporate Action Plan is expected to facilitate the preparation and implementation of the community-wide plan.
An important focus of the community-wide action plan will undoubtedly be on the transportation sector, which is responsible for 49% of all GHG emissions on the Island of Montreal. This aspect of the action plan will be supported by the City's recent adoption of a Transportation Plan, which is based on principles of urban sustainability. The plan focuses on the issue of climate change and emphasizes the need to shift travel demand to alternatives to the automobile, such as public transport, active transportation, carpooling and car sharing.
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