TestDev - Green Municipal Fund Annual report 2019-2020

Our GMF team achieved its stretch funding targets this year by approving close to $92M in funding for capital projects, with less than 20% withdrawals. We also achieved our granting target of close to $6.6M for the year for plans, studies and pilot projects. These results mark the largest funding amounts approved in a single year since GMF’s inception.

This past year, the GMF team developed three innovative initiatives that are unlike our previous core funding models.

Two of the initiatives encourage innovation in energy efficiency in the built environment: Community Efficiency Financing (CEF) and Sustainable Affordable Housing (SAH). 

The CEF initiative supports new types of local financing programs for low-rise residential property owners who want to invest in energy efficiency and renewable energy upgrades. 

The SAH initiative focuses on energy efficient retrofit programs and new builds in the affordable housing sector, a relatively new area for GMF. 

FCM also partnered with six new organizations, spearheaded by The Atmospheric Fund (TAF), in 2019-2020 to create the Low Carbon Cities Canada (LC3) initiative. With the support of GMF staff and the six host organizations, LC3 is establishing a network of seven Centres in major Canadian cities. Each Centre supports projects that are tailored to their local context. Many of the host organizations and anticipated clients are new types of stakeholders for GMF (non-profits, charitable foundations, corporations, etc.). This meant developing an entirely new type of model for this initiative. 

This year, we piloted GMF Signature Projects — an initiative dedicated to funding transformative, best-in-class municipal projects — and it was a success. We mobilized this offer to support municipal projects that are outside the scope of our core funding offers, but still have tremendous potential and value. 

Our team approved more than $12M in loans and more than $2M in grants under this stream. That includes funding for two capital projects that focus on key GMF impact focal points: transportation and energy.

The first capital project is a new traffic integration system in Ontario, which has the potential to significantly reduce GHG emissions and improve transportation infrastructure. Prince Edward Island will also receive funding to implement renewable energy generation and storage technology within a small municipal utility. That initiative has the potential to generate solar energy while reducing GHGs.

We also approved funding for an energy-sector feasibility study in Ontario. This project will evaluate the technical and financial requirements for constructing a power-to-gas facility using hydrogen, which would be a first of its kind in Canada. 

We have every confidence in the emerging Signature Projects funding initiative as a transformative and cross-cutting offering. It adds a new level of flexibility to GMF funding offerings and covers even bolder technical, financial and capacity-building innovation.  

We’re making it easier than ever for clients to interact with the GMF program and access funding. Our first advance-based payments contract is signed and the development of new support mechanisms for applicants is on track. The team also brought several innovative pilots and practices to life this year, including:

• Larger capital project loans
• Lowered interest rates
• A continuous intake of capital project applications
• More on-site visits to support client relationships
• More streamlined end-of-project reporting (for plans, studies and pilot projects)
• No cap on municipal staff time eligibility (for plans, studies and pilot projects)

In the next phase of this work, we’ll monitor customer satisfaction with the changes and assess whether they optimally enable clients to succeed.

In 2019-2020, we acted on research from the previous year. We made best practices more available to elected officials, municipal practitioners and other key stakeholders through two mechanisms:  

• We published summary research reports on waste, water and land use. Each one provides a snapshot of high-impact practices with triple-bottom-line benefits (environmental, economic, social).
• We hosted a free webinar series to raise awareness about each of the five sectors in which we work. The webinars showcased innovative ways to reduce GHG emissions in energy, transportation, waste, water and land use. 

In 2019-2020, our team began preparing for the upcoming Sustainable Communities Conference (SCC). Originally set to take place in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador in October of 2020, it will now take place online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The 2020 SCC will feature the Sustainable Communities Awards to showcase our partners’ successes and help awardees tell the story of how their project transformed their community. 

We’re celebrating GMF’s 20th anniversary this year with a new award category: The Visionary Award. It celebrates an initiative that demonstrates long-term community change, and is open to any project completed in the last 20 years.

Replication potential is a top priority at GMF when we assess project applications. This year, we made a special effort to scale out the lessons learned by the City of Kingston. It won the inaugural ‘Inspire Award’ at our Sustainable Communities Conference in 2018 for its Kingston Transit High School Pass Program. 

Working with the City of Kingston and the Limestone District School Board, we developed a guidebook outlining the project’s implementation steps, keys to success and lessons learned. The guidebook launched in April 2019, and we hosted a promotional webinar in May. At least a dozen Canadian municipalities have already taken the initial steps to replicate this initiative.

FCM’s Leadership in Brownfield Renewal (LiBRe) network connects municipal staff across Canada, whose municipalities are committed to remediating and redeveloping their brownfield sites. The program moves municipalities through a seven-step, best practices framework.

GMF staff supported LiBRe this year with a recruitment campaign, welcoming 25 new individual members to its English and French cohorts. We also launched a micro-learning email series called Fostering brownfield redevelopment. The series delivers short, weekly emails to municipal staff and elected officials over eight weeks, outlining key actions, from how to streamline their municipality’s approval process to building partnerships with brownfield stakeholders. More than 130 subscribers registered in the two weeks after the launch.

FCM is required to conduct a third-party review and a performance audit of GMF every five years. The resulting reports are made public and may be tabled in Parliament. This year, Ernst & Young conducted the five-year review and the performance audit for April 1, 2014 through March 31, 2019. The results were very positive, with no material negative findings. Ernst & Young concluded that our GMF operations are consistent with the terms set out in the Funding Agreement. It noted that client satisfaction is strong, our funding is critical to project completion and knowledge services are highly valuable to municipalities. FCM agreed with the findings in the two reports, indicating that GMF is well suited to deliver on its mandate and should continue to expand performance measurement practices, advance information and data systems and monitor stakeholder priorities to stay aligned with the needs of Canadian municipalities. We’ve launched a management response initiative to ensure action on all recommendations from the two reports.