Carbon budget urged to ensure Mobility Master Plan helps achieve London’s greenhouse gas targets

The Environmental Advisory Committee hopes a carbon budget will help London meet its greenhouse gas targets. CTV’s Daryl Newcombe explains.

A council-appointed advisory committee wants more to be done to ensure London’s 25-year Mobility Master Plan (MMP) will align with the city’s greenhouse gas emission targets.

“The reality of the matter is we are not on track to meet our greenhouse gas emission reduction targets,” said Brendon Samuels, chair of the Environmental Stewardship and Action Community Advisory Committee (ESACAC).

A working group’s report to ESACAC regarding the MMP warned, “We believe the lack of carbon budgeting represents a critical gap in the City’s response to climate change that threatens progress on emissions reduction.”

A carbon budget is a calculation of the maximum amount of carbon dioxide that can be emitted while keeping on pace with targets in London’s Climate Emergency Action Plan (CEAP).

“That might mean (London) changes how we make decisions,” Samuels told CTV News. “When we’re thinking about the actual cost of projects, it’s no longer just about dollars. Is this going to be more carbon than we are comfortable expending from our budget?”

The MMP is a 25-year plan of infrastructure projects meant to ensure people and goods can move efficiently throughout the city in vehicles, on public transit, and by active transportation.

Meanwhile, the CEAP is a strategy to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

Samuels suggests that carbon budgeting could help assure the two strategies align, “It’s unacceptable that at this stage, we are speculating about whether we’re doing the right things to meet our targets. We should be measuring these things and modeling them.”

Sarah Grady, manager of Transportation Design, wrote in a statement, “As part of [the] Mobility Master Plan we are forecasting greenhouse gas emissions for 2050 based on a comprehensive set of variables and assumptions, including the 2050 mode share target, trip lengths, how vehicles are fueled, and how efficient they are.”

Grady added that if the city undertook carbon budgeting in the future, it would pertain to the Climate Emergency Action Plan and would be applied across city hall’s various departments and projects.

Samuels explained, “In the multi-year budget we urged City Council to fund the development of capacity for [the city] to develop a carbon budget—but they did not fund that.”

Cities including Edmonton and Toronto that are taking steps to adopting carbon budgeting.

London’s Mobility Master Plan remains on track to be approved later this year.