Once again, we’ve created a GMF initiative that rounds three bases as it heads toward home on environmental, economic and social targets.
In line with our focus on making buildings more energy efficient, our team spent time this year developing and preparing to launch the CBR initiative. This $167M initiative supports Canadian municipalities and not-for-profit organizations in retrofitting municipal recreational and cultural facilities.
CBR launched in April 2021, and we look forward to reporting on it further in our next annual report.
There’s a pressing need
Canadian communities own and operate a diverse portfolio of aging buildings such as arenas, pools, libraries, and recreation and cultural centres. These are often at the heart of the community, but many are older, inefficient and in need of upgrades. They consume high rates of natural gas and electricity and emit high levels of GHGs, but several barriers, such as a lack of resources and competing priorities, make retrofitting these buildings difficult.
With CBR’s support, municipalities will significantly reduce local GHG emissions, improve energy performance in their assets, lower operating and maintenance costs, create local jobs, preserve important community hubs and extend the life cycle of community assets.
Here’s what’s on offer
CBR focuses on small to medium-sized and rural municipalities as they tackle infrastructure projects using four funding products:
- A community building monitoring and analysis grant
- A community building recommissioning grant
- A GHG-reduction pathway feasibility study grant
- Capital project funding (a combined loan and grant to address GHG impact retrofits and GHG reduction pathways)
These will be available to Canadian municipalities and not-for-profit organizations that own and operate community buildings, with the exception of the cities with LC3 centres (Halifax Regional Municipality, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver). We look forward to launching CBR and accepting funding applications in the year ahead.