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Secretaria Municipal do Verde e do Meio Ambiente

Toronto’s Atmospheric Fund makes sustainability affordable

TAF is making the impossible possible by funding sustainable projects that often cannot be financed through traditional sources
Segunda-feira, 3 de Dezembro de 2012 | Horário: 15:45

What is it?

TAF finances Toronto-based initiatives that combat global climate change and improve air quality through a self-sustaining revolving fund. TAF’s mission is to pioneer solutions that accelerate reductions in local greenhouse gas emission. It provides grants, makes loans, undertakes special projects, and creates partnerships with all sectors of the community, city departments and agencies to facilitate action on climate change.


Assessing Grants

TAF funding allows innovative projects that traditional financial sources may find difficult to finance, to be implemented. It focuses on three main areas:

* Renewable energy;
* Energy conservation and efficiency; and
* Reducing the fossil fuel content of energy sources.


Projects are assesses according on their potential to:

* Incubate innovative solutions and address opportunities that are especially being over-looked by other agencies. About a third of the grants fund City of Toronto projects that cannot be included in the City’s annual budget or that may carry a higher level of risk than usual. Projects by public institutions and non-profit organizations in the community ac-count for the rest of the grants; and
* Provide strategic information, direction, education, and community partnerships that will lead to emissions reductions in the future.


TAF funding

TAF was originally endowed with $23 million ($CAD), US$19 million, or two-thirds of which came from energy savings from a citywide street light retrofit. The endowment is valued today at $28 million ($CAD). TAF’s assets generate approximately $1.5 million in revenue annually for grants and special projects. Up to $8 million in financing from TAF’s assets is also available for mandate-related loans. Total project funding since inception has been about $30 million.

The City expects the financing side of TAF’s program to grow rapidly as it finds partners in the financial sector who are willing to leverage loan guarantees and other financial products that TAF is currently developing.