About the Carbon Governance Living Lab

The Carbon Governance Living Lab (CGLL) is a Volt-Age-funded project based at Concordia University. It investigates local decarbonization initiatives designed to address climate change in municipalities, with the goal of supporting innovation and learning from best practices.

The CGLL brings together academics and practitioners with expertise in climate governance and policy, electrification, just transitions, urban energy systems, and urban transformation. This dataset was developed to map the landscape of existing local decarbonization interventions in the buildings sector, both planned and underway, in municipalities across Canada. For more information on the CGLL, visit our website.

About the dataset

This dataset comprises data extracted from 104 Canadian municipal climate action plans, representing 104 communities across 10 provinces and 2 territories. The municipalities in this dataset are shown in the map of Canada below. These plans are usually organized around major emissions-producing activity sectors, such as transportation, waste, energy, and buildings. Given that buildings account for approximately 40% of global energy consumption and contribute significantly to greenhouse gas emissions, they are a critical area of municipal climate action (Zhang et al., 2023; Jadidi et al., 2026). This dataset, therefore, includes only actions that municipalities included in the buildings section of their climate action plans, specifically relating to emissions mitigation. While adaptation actions are also critical to climate response, they were not the focus of this study. The dataset may be expanded to include climate actions for other activity sectors and/or adaptation in the future.

We reviewed all 104 plans and identified 1283 building-related mitigation actions. Then, using the Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance (CNCA) Framework for Long-Term Deep Carbon Reduction Planning, we grouped each action into one of 14 strategies and subsequently into one of four policy levers. The dataset with the coded strategies and levers is available to download here. For more on how this dataset was created, visit our methodology section.

Examples and definitions for each policy lever based on the CNCA Framework are provided here:

Policy Lever	Definition	Example strategy	Example action
Encouraging voluntary action	Providing information, challenges, learning opportunities, technical assistance, examples, and other support to encourage people to change their behaviors	Encourage Improved Energy Efficiency Performance of Existing Buildings	Promote “cool roofs” — coating of rooftops white to reduce building energy use
Sending price signals	Improving the economic impacts, such as cost and return on investments, through subsidies and incentives to drive new behaviours and investment.	Support/Provide Rewards for Performance.	Provide regulatory and zoning relief for projects meeting certifiable high standards (e.g., LEED).
Making public investments	Investing government funds, short- and long-term, to create conditions that stimulate others to behave in new ways, while also significantly changing the government’s own carbon footprint.	Model the Behavior- Invest in Energy Retrofitting of Government Buildings.	Conduct deep retrofitting and/or installation of on-site renewable energy supply.
Mandating change	Requiring behaviour and enforcing requirements for widespread compliance.	Mandate Performance Improvement of Existing Buildings.	Require targeted buildings (e.g., commercial above certain amount of floor area) to benchmark (measure and disclose) energy performance, and/or conduct energy audits, and/or install energy sub-meters for large tenants.

(Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance, 2015)

About the data visualization

The interactive bar charts below provide an overview of the policy levers and strategies used at the national, provincial, and municipal levels.

To begin, select a view (National, Provincial, or Municipal) under See the Data. For the provincial and municipal views, choose the relevant province and, where applicable, municipality to display the charts.

You can also explore the specific strategies associated with each policy lever. Select a policy lever from the dropdown menu to view the breakdown of strategies within the category at the selected level of analysis (i.e., national, provincial, municipal).