Seeing through a New Climate Lens: Canada’s Policy Approach to Climate-Resilient Infrastructure

In 2018, Infrastructure Canada introduced the Climate Lens Assessment as a requirement for all large infrastructure projects (project costs over $10M) seeking funding support from the Government of Canada. The Climate Lens is an innovative policy approach that encourages public sector organizations to better assess the climate impacts and hazards of their projects. This assessment consists of two components to identify carbon reduction opportunities and likely climate change hazards over the full project lifecycle: an extensive GHG emissions inventory of the infrastructure asset and the use of a risk management approach to identifying climate risks. In this paper we will compare the required methodologies within the Climate Lens against emerging best practices from our multi-disciplinary perspective as engineering, environmental science, and planning consultants working on large infrastructure projects across Canada. We will share observations from our recent application of the Climate Lens on new and existing public transit, remote airport, highway, and renewable energy infrastructure projects. This paper provides feedback on the effectiveness of the new Infrastructure Canada policy in achieving its aim to incentivize behavioral change to promote consideration of climate impacts in the planning of infrastructure projects; we include our observations for policy updates.