The Challenge

After declaring a climate emergency, the City of Victoria faced a familiar but urgent problem: how to move from declaration to delivery. Ambitious climate targets were in place, but the City needed a clear, legally defensible way to act—quickly—within municipal authority, market readiness, and real-world constraints.

The challenge was not vision.

It was prioritization, coordination, and execution at emergency speed.

Our Role

McLennan Design was brought in as outside counsel to help the City determine what actions would matter most, which tools were feasible, and how to bundle policies into a coherent, implementable framework. Our work focused on turning complexity into clarity—aligning buildings, land use, energy systems, and market forces into a single, strategic roadmap.

The Outcome

The result was a curated set of integrated policy pathways—grounded in precedent, informed by market realities, and designed for rapid adoption. Presented to City Council in 2019, the framework helped shift Victoria from aspirational climate leadership to measurable, city-wide action, with multiple recommendations adopted and underway.

Scope of Work

• 30+ integrated policy recommendations
• 4 policy categories:
  • Cost-Cutting & Efficiency
  • Low-Carbon Existing Buildings
  • Zero-Carbon New Construction
  • Land Use & Urban Form

“Our assignment as a consultant team was to help the City of Victoria understand the best path forward within all the possible strategies and to recommend a specific ‘recipe’ to follow based on all the possible ingredients. Given the City’s legal limits and budget restraints, a careful curation of programs becomes essential to have significant positive impact and to build momentum and lasting success for the initiative.”

Jason F. McLennan