Supporting Canadian municipalities in achieving their GHG reduction goals

With influence over roughly 50 percent of the nation’s GHG emissions, local governments have a major part to play in helping Canada reach net-zero by 2050. To meet our climate goals, we need to increase ambition and explore new and innovative GHG reduction opportunities and transition to a resilient, low-carbon future. By embracing low-carbon solutions, communities can produce less carbon pollution, improve resident health and strengthen the local economy.

The Municipal Net-Zero Action Research Partnership (N-ZAP) aims to study and create improved methods for how local governments monitor, measure and reduce local GHG emissions. These evaluation methods will make it easier for municipalities to identify, develop and assess decarbonization initiatives, with the goal of aligning local climate work with national commitments.

Participate in the program

Interested in getting involved? N-ZAP is recruiting 250 Canadian municipalities to participate as pilot communities.

Register your municipality's interest in becoming a pilot community.

By participating in N-ZAP, your municipality will: 

• Have the opportunity to contribute to the climate conversation at a national level and advance local GHG reduction efforts
• Showcase the work and efforts of its climate policy in a publicly accessible database 
• Gain access to cutting-edge resources on climate budgeting, measurement and collaborative governance produced by the program as they become available

Explore N-ZAP resources

N-ZAP has published several cutting-edge learning tools and data-driven resources that are helping to accelerate municipal climate action across Canada.

Community Partnerships for Equitable Local Climate Action: When it comes to climate action, it’s better to work together. Research shows that local governments that form partnerships with their broader community make better progress toward their climate targets, including reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This guide gives recommendations on how to design (or improve) partnerships for effective community-wide climate action, including step-by-step guidance between formation, planning, implementation and evaluation.

Climate Budgeting: Climate budgeting is a governance system that incorporates climate commitments and considerations into decision making on policies, actions, and budget allocation. It’s done by integrating climate targets and climate impact evaluation into the financial budgeting process and assigning responsibility for implementation, monitoring, evaluation, and reporting across the municipal government. This guide was created to support Canadian municipalities and local governments in their climate budgeting journey.

The State of Climate Action in Canadian Municipalities: N-ZAP conducted a survey of 256 Canadian municipalities across 10 provinces, collectively representing approximately 69.5 percent of the Canadian population. The participating municipalities disclosed crucial information relating to local climate action planning and implementation, GHG inventories, policy interventions and stakeholder engagement initiatives. This report provides a detailed summary of the survey data and how communities can use it to inform their decision making.

‍N-ZAP is a research partnership funded, in part, by the Government of Canada through the Climate Action and Awareness Fund (CAAF) and jointly led by the University of Waterloo, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities’ (FCM) Green Municipal Fund (GMF) and ICLEI Canada, working with 11 other academic institutions, and 8 national organizations and 15 municipal partners.

This project was undertaken with the financial support of the Government of Canada.