OCAF’s Ottawa Climate-Economy Opportunities Summit October 9, 2024 opened a conversation on the powerful potential to drive down greenhouse gas emissions, while building up the local economy and helping to expand the supply of affordable housing.
A group of 85 local business and community leaders spent most of the day onsite digging into the potential, obstacles, and next steps to move five key action opportunities off the page and out into the world.
- Public Land for New Housing: Identifying parcels of surplus land that can be deployed quickly to deliver more affordable, low-carbon/net-zero new housing;
- Reno-Protection: Public-private collaboration to acquire older apartment buildings for deep energy retrofits while permanently protecting their affordability;
- Gentle Density Accelerator: Discovering how to house more people on under-utilized residential lots while tackling neighbourhoods’ carbon footprint;
- Energy Resilience Districts: Looking beyond the building at how technology can deliver deep energy efficiency, onsite renewable power, energy storage, and district energy solutions in new developments;
- Ottawa’s Green Pipeline: Bringing together the investment opportunities, investors, finance mechanisms, and matchmaking services to accelerate delivery of low-carbon, more affordable housing supply.
Get the rest of the story by reading the Summit summary report.
Public Lands for New Housing
Action opportunity champion Katie Paris of the National Capital Commission said the NCC has reached a “breakthrough moment”, with more disposals on the horizon and an institutional willingness to streamline the process.
Participants defined four target audiences or markets for new homes: people who can afford the full price of housing; households that need affordable or rent-geared-to-income units, priced at least 30% below market rate; people on fixed incomes; and deeply low-income occupants in need of transitional or emergency housing. The group agreed to a series of steps toward making public lands available for new housing.
Reno-Protection
A reno-protection initiative would keep rental housing affordable after it has been protected under non-profit ownership, and has undergone badly-needed deep energy retrofits, said action opportunity champions Paige Waldock of Cahdco and Mike Bulthuis of the Ottawa Community Land Trust.
A significant share of the affordable rental stock in Ottawa is at or past the point where it is due for major renovations, and the most affordable units are generally in the worst condition. But without systems and structures to keep those units affordable, occupants are too often “renovicted” before the work is complete. The group agreed to develop a business case to identify potential investors and funders, and engage with tenants and communities toward the development of a reno-protection pilot project.
Gentle Density Accelerator
One participant remarked that “in theory, everyone should want this,” noting that a gentle density accelerator helps owners cover mortgage costs, gives aspiring renters more choice, allows cities to maximize the use of existing infrastructure, and aligns with the federal government’s interest in sustainability. But the group also identified major obstacles to the idea, beginning with backlogged approvals due to slow zoning and permitting processes, a limited number of verified contractors, and poor access to financing.
The group agreed to map out a concierge framework for a gentle density accelerator, identify potential sites and design options, then secure funds for a pilot project to test the concept.
Energy Resilience Districts
Action opportunity champion Steve Winkelman framed the opportunity to “integrate and concentrate beyond-the-building energy solutions at specific sites to keep the lights and heat on, carbon down, and business humming—no matter the weather or state of the power grid.”
Kelly Daize, Executive Director of the Kanata North Business Association, traced the immediate opportunity to help local tech leaders achieve their net-zero emissions targets by transforming the Kanata Business Park into an energy resilience district. She described the site as an “economic crown jewel that needs to happen now,” an opportunity for Canada’s biggest tech park to position the nation’s capital as a clean technology leader and set an example for other communities.
The group identified the need for an order-of-magnitude energy and cost study for the site to assess current and projected energy demand (thermal and electric), efficiency potential, solar generation potential, storage potential (thermal and electric), and associated costs.
Green Pipeline
Before and during the Summit, the challenge of building Ottawa’s Green Pipeline for more affordable, low-carbon housing investments emerged as an essential action opportunity in its own right, and a crosscutting priority for anything else that OCAF and its community partners set out to achieve. Participants laid out an ambitious vision and timeline for assembling the resources and supports to maximize local opportunity and results in the transition off carbon.
Funding, scalability, local capacity, predictability of outcomes, regulatory constraints, and engagement across the full gamut of stakeholders quickly emerged as key challenges to be addressed by a Green Pipeline initiative. The group identified a number of pathways for getting major initiatives under way, including Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing, cleantech tax credits, and a wider mix of capital sources, to be deployed through large-scale projects with distinct risk profiles that emphasize the link between health and housing.