Climate Planning Public Engagements
Inspire resident ownership for carbon budgets
Educate residents about the trade-offs involved in your climate strategy and inspire ownership by meaningfully including them in the process. Ethelo’s decision-making algorithm and suite of engagement services can help you build better climate initiatives that get broad community support.
“With 25% of our permanent residents participating in the Ethelo survey, I think it was a tremendous success, with a level of engagement far beyond my wildest dreams.”
Kim Neale
Climate Coordinator, Central Manitoulin & Billings Township
Educate, Engage and Explore
Share information in a way that’s approachable and easy to understand
Make Trade-Offs and Weigh Priorities
Teach people how carbon budgeting can relate to personal budgeting
Hosted Public Engagements
Get help with everything from design, to launch to digital marketing and personalized analysis in your reports
Discover how Salt Spring Island meaningfully engaged more than 10% of residents amidst the COVID-19 pandemic
See how they did itMake decisions that meet the needs of your whole community
Including a more diverse group of residents in your engagements helps ensure your decisions reflect priorities across your community. Learn how our team can help you engage a representative sample of hundreds or thousands of residents.
Climate Projects
Carbon Budget
Ethelo’s carbon budget engagement process empowers residents to compare costs of emissions reduction opportunities and make trade-offs amongst climate solution policies. Customize your engagement with quality of life indicators and more to help your community reach its carbon reduction targets and help you design your Community Energy and Emissions Plan or similar processes.
Climate Solutions and Water Policy
Explore a wide variety of policy issues, major project proposals, budget processes and more. With Ethelo you can drill down on specific parts of your communities' plan to learn where people stand, and how best to implement your plans. Quickly get useful public input no matter what stage you are in in your plan.
Environmental Master Plan
Make environmental planning simpler and more inclusive. Ethelo helps residents understand proposals and participate in the trade-offs required for decision-making. Create the next phase of your plan with confidence and broad support from your community..
Funding Retrofits - PACE Funding Calculator
Take the headache out of applying for Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) Funding programs in your community. Instead of asking residents to find and fill out a long form on your website to apply for funds, let residents use Ethelo’s simple PACE funding calculator. Homeowners can see for themselves if you are the right fit for the program. You can also get great feedback on what would help make your roll out a success and identify the ideal participants.
Your Project
Fill out the form to get a free consultation with one of our engagement specialists.
It’s challenging to engage a representative slice of our island community using traditional public meetings. Generally, the same small group of people attends all the public engagement sessions. It was great to see that a broad cross-section of community members took part in the process and, as a result, this process will be able to help us identify specific policies that can be more widely agreed upon by the community.
Laura Patrick
Island Trust Elected Official
The online public engagement was very effective. The eDemocracy team made the set up and execution of the process easy and efficient. We learned a lot about the priorities of our particular community, and gained further understanding of our citizenry through the 233 pages of comments the survey garnered. There would be great value in running a similar exercise within a year to assess the effectiveness of our planned outreach and education programs.
Darryl J Martin
Chair of Climate Action Plan Steering Committee
This is a fantastic project, to survey island residents and be able to see what we would all support, and then use this information to support environmental change. Kudos to all who have worked so diligently to create this survey. It is a wonderful step towards making our island a part of the global change that is absolutely essential for human beings and all our relations.
Survey Participant
Free Resources
Reaching beyond the usual suspects
As someone who works in local government, you know how challenging it can be to reach a broad cross-section of your community and hear from underrepresented groups. In this Masterclass series, you’ll get access to five free, daily videos, highlighting tips and tricks to expand your public engagement.
Start NowPractical lessons from the frontlines of the climate emergency
Cities and municipalities are on the frontlines of the climate emergency. They're also on the frontlines of bold solutions to address it. Learn how two communities who worked with residents to build strong, equitable climate emergency action plans, reaching 25% of their permanent resident population.
Watch NowAre local governments going back to business as usual on climate?
For local governments, business as usual means getting back to the ability to plan their communities long-term into the future. For the climate, it means being on track for 3ºC of planetary warming. Even as we recover from the pandemic, the impending natural disasters, health crises, and inequalities exacerbated by climate change will throw our long-term planning into question. It’s clear that we simply can’t afford to go back to business as usual.
Read the Blog
