Electric vehicle rebate among staff proposals to speed up Toronto’s target to become a carbon neutral city
The city is proposing a new program to speed up its goal to become carbon neutral, and it’s asking staff to consider how to fund it.
The proposal, coming out of staff workshops and board presentations in late May, is part of efforts to speed up the city’s goal to become carbon neutral by 2040, which is set for 2030 under the Climate Action Plan.
According to a staff presentation, the program is designed to boost the city’s carbon abatement, carbon credit and emission reduction activities through a rebate in the form of a tax credit to public transit and transit passengers. The credit, as described by staff, will be calculated using carbon intensity as the unit of measurement and will not apply to the purchase of fossil fuel-based energy, as required by the Climate Action Plan.
“We are currently developing that rebate into an actual program that will have tax rate components,” said Brad Ross, environment protection and infrastructure manager. “We need an actual program for the rebate to be calculated.”
However, it’s unclear when the program will launch, as the city will begin the process of defining how the credit would be calculated.
In addition to the rebate, which should boost public transit activity, Toronto also wants to create an incentive for electric vehicles using carbon credits by waiving the $5,000 registration fee for electric vehicles.
The staff proposal to waive the fee was part of the city’s efforts to reduce overall emissions, which includes those from the building and manufacturing sectors, the report said.
The program, if implemented, would be effective in the first year of the target.
Under the proposal, people who registered their electric vehicles in Toronto using the province’s Electric Vehicle Rebate and Credit Program would be refunded the $5,000 fee paid for electric vehicles. The amount of the credit would be calculated using the carbon intensity of the vehicle.
When the vehicle is purchased and registered with the City of Toronto using a province-backed credit, a consumer would qualify to receive a tax credit equal to the value of the rebate, along with a “fee credit” equal to 25 per cent of the cost of the vehicle, the proposal stated.
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