A new report issued by the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario (FAO) suggests that climate change is significantly increasing the cost of maintaining public buildings and keeping them in a state of good repair.

The report, Costing Climate Change Impacts to Public Infrastructure (CIPI): Buildings, was published on December 7. It and assesses the financial impacts of three climate hazards: extreme rainfall, extreme heat, and freeze-thaw cycles on public buildings in Ontario, and concludes that the cost to maintain public buildings in the face of these climate hazards will rise by $6 billion through 2030.

The provincial and municipal governments currently manage a portfolio of buildings and facilities that is worth $254 billion. The report says that if the climate were stable, it would cost around $10 billion per year to keep those assets in a state of good repair.

Climate change, however, is leading to more extreme rainfall, more extreme heat, and fewer freeze-thaw cycles in Ontario. Public buildings will therefore require more operations and maintenance activities, and more repair spending to address accelerated deterioration.

The report suggests that climate change will continue to increase the costs of maintaining public buildings through the remainder of the 21st century.

In its medium-emissions scenario, where global emissions peak in the 2040s then rapidly decline, changes in these climate hazards will increase infrastructure costs by an additional $66 billion over the century, or about $0.8 billion per year on average.

In a high-emissions scenario, where global emissions continue to grow over the century and Ontario’s average annual temperature rises twice as fast as the global average by the middle of the century, the additional costs would increase by $116 billion, or by $1.5 billion per year on average.

The FAO also explored the financial implications of adapting Ontario’s public buildings to withstand these climate hazards and found that broad adaptation strategies would be modestly less costly for provincial and municipal governments than not adapting. They would also have significant but un-costed benefits, such as minimizing the disruption of public services.

Regardless of whether an adaptation strategy is pursued, climate change is materially increasing the cost of maintaining public buildings in Ontario with significant direct impacts on provincial and municipal infrastructure budgets over the rest of the century.

The CIPI buildings report is the first of three reports in which the FAO presents a series of costing scenarios. The others, for transportation and water infrastructure, will be published in 2022.