Climate Lens Assessments

Organizations seeking access to federal funding for large infrastructure projects in Canada are required to complete Climate Lens Assessments (CLA). Since completing Canada’s first CLA, our interdisciplinary team has worked on dozens more across the country and have developed an optimized approach to help you seamlessly complete each step of the Climate Lens Assessment.

What is the Climate Lens?

The Climate Lens is an assessment framework developed by Infrastructure Canada in 2018. It helps decision-makers understand the climate change risks and impacts associated with the design, construction and operation of large infrastructure projects in Canada. The Climate Lens is intended to guide infrastructure projects towards designs that minimize greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and are resilient to climate change. It is required for project funding associated with several of Infrastructure Canada’s programs, including the Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program (ICIP), the Disaster Mitigation and Adaptation Fund (DMAF) and Smart Cities Challenge.

What are the Climate Lens requirements?

The Climate Lens includes two assessments: a GHG mitigation and climate resilience assessment. The type of assessment required depends on the type of Infrastructure Canada program being pursued, its funding stream, and the project’s estimated cost. The assessment can range from preliminary to comprehensive, depending on the magnitude of the risks identified. There are cases in which applications require either one or both assessments.

Featured capabilities

Our team includes the full spectrum of professionals required to conduct and validate Climate Lens resilience assessments: professional engineers, ISO-certified GHG accountants, climate science experts, biologists, and hydrologists. We work to understand the distinct needs, challenges, and objectives of each project and client, and can provide tailored assessments to help you navigate this new requirement.

Climate Change, Resilience and Sustainability

Discover our services

Climate Lens resilience assessment

We help you identify, assess, mitigate and manage potential risks associated with climate change during your project’s design and operation. We can also conduct loss estimation analysis and return on investment (ROI) for the project.

Climate Lens GHG mitigation assessment

We estimate your project’s GHG emissions and reductions relative to a business-as-usual scenario.

Clients we help

Investors, businesses and industry

WSP is uniquely positioned to provide support for all CLA requirements. Our broad technical expertise, coupled with our knowledge of climate change risks and resilience, enables us to deliver measures that improve your project’s physical resilience, making it future-ready. Beyond meeting requirements, we can help you increase capacity to grow your resilient infrastructure investments in the future.

Infrastructure owners and operators

Our experienced team has conducted Climate Lens Assessments for a wide range of infrastructure projects in regions across Canada. Our professionals are adept at facilitating CLAs customized to meet your specific project needs and objectives. This can aid you in adapting your infrastructure planning process to improve resilience, reduce costs, and increase the lifecycle of your current and future projects.

Municipalities

Our experienced municipal infrastructure experts can help you complete cost-effective and efficient CLAs to help you access federal funding for infrastructure projects, improve resilience, and continue providing services to your community. Our experience completing these assessments enables us to provide you with innovative solutions and detailed design considerations.

Federal and provincial governments

With our widespread presence in Canada and technical expertise, we can support large-scale provincial- and federal-level projects. Our extensive experience with Climate Lens Assessments has allowed us to streamline our approach and deliver efficient results that support resilient infrastructure decision-making in the long term.