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The Green Party of Ontario has released its Climate Plan: Roadmap to Net-Zero.

The plan outlines the party’s top strategies:

Crush climate pollution:

1. Adopt a Zero Carbon Law that sets a Fair Share Carbon Budget for the rest of the century. Cut Ontario’s climate pollution in half by 2030 and to net-zero every year from 2045.
2. Keep money and jobs in Ontario. Replace imported fossil fuels by doubling clean Ontario electricity.
3. Clean the air by replacing fossil fuel used in vehicles (in half by 2030 and to net-zero by 2040) with electric vehicles, transit, active transportation and compact communities.
4. Use energy efficiency upgrades and heat pumps to replace fossil fuel use in buildings 40% by 2030 and to net-zero by 2040.
5. Support Ontario entrepreneurs to build world-leading clean businesses in energy storage (e.g. batteries), electric/ fuel cell mobility, smart transit and low-carbon biomaterials.

Restore water and nature:

1. Work with Indigenous Peoples to protect 25% of Ontario by 2025 and 30% by 2030.
2. Clean up toxins in air and water, especially in the most polluted areas.

Succeed together:

1. Create new careers and better green jobs for hundreds of thousands of people, and improve business opportunities for thousands of green entrepreneurs.
2. Create a $2 billion per-year Climate Adaptation Fund to support municipalities with green and resilient infrastructure.
3. Focus 25% of the overall benefits of this plan on disadvantaged communities.

OSPE understands and knows that climate change is real, and has been accelerated by human activity. OSPE also knows that more must be done and that the current climate crisis represents a serious – even existential threat – to our way of life.

OSPE commends the Green Party of Ontario (GPO) for its advocacy efforts and for raising public and political awareness of the catastrophic consequences of continuing to ignore sustainability in our decision processes. It is evident that a considerable amount of thought and effort went into developing the GPO’s Climate Plan.

However, OSPE believes that achievement of the Net-Zero target will take considerably longer, will cost more and/or will need considerably more effort than has been proposed. OSPE believes that this plan could use some enhancements to reflect what is feasible from an engineering perspective. 

OSPE has put forward the following comments and recommendations regarding this climate plan:

1. Further decarbonization of Ontario’s electricity generation capacity is not practical in the medium term, will not achieve a material reduction in overall greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and risks exhausting public commitment to higher potential decarbonization initiatives.
2. Electrification of the transportation sector provides significant opportunity but will require significant investment in electrical generation, transmission, and distribution system capacity.
3. The roadmap should clearly emphasize opportunities in Ontario’s industrial sector.
4. Incentivizing heat pump adoption is a good idea but cannot replace natural gas heating in the roadmap’s timeframe.
5. The significance of the present deficit in skilled engineers, technologists, technicians, and trades has not been fully recognized in the plan.
6. Recent developments in nuclear energy technology and its potential contribution to providing sustainable emission-free energy have been dismissed
7. GHG reduction plans must recognize the pressures facing Ontario’s economy and its capacity to adjust.

Read OSPE’s Full Letter to the Green Party of Ontario

The Climate Crisis is one of OSPE’s top Advocacy priorities for 2022. OSPE will be hosting various events on the Climate Crisis on

March 3, 2022 from 2:00pm – 3:30pm – Register here: Members Only: Ontario and its Fight Against Climate Change

March 16, 2022 from 6:00pm – 8:15pm – Register here: Members Only Consultation on Climate Crisis