Insights and Analysis

Using the Land Use Impact Calculator Tool

Webinar

Jeremy Murphy
Noah Purves-Smith

13 May 2025

How we develop land today shapes our emissions, infrastructure costs, and public health outcomes for decades to come. The Land Use Impact Calculator Tool helps cities make the business case for sustainable development by quantifying the financial and climate impact land-use decisions.

The Land-Use Impact Calculator (LUIC) is a free Microsoft Excel plug-in that we developed with the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) and Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) for local governments to assess the financial and greenhouse gas impacts of new developments. It is accompanied by a guidebook that  compares different land-use development scenarios to show the costs and benefits of different development patterns.

In this webinar, Jeremy Murphy and Noah Purves-Smith will walk participants through a click-by-click demonstration of how to use the tool for different development scenarios.

Date: May 22, 2025

Time: 11:00 AM PT

Speakers

Jeremy Murphy (he/him)
Principal Consultant | SSG

Jeremy (he/him) is an urban planner and climate change planner focused on fostering community climate emergency solutions. A foremost expert on climate change mitigation planning, he has led teams in developing leading climate action plans for all levels of government as well as institutions across North America. A big vision thinker with an eye for detail, Jeremy helps guide projects to establish and achieve ambitious goals through tangible actions. He is experienced with community energy and emissions modelling, climate change mitigation and adaptation planning, policy development, green building systems and policies, integrated design facilitation, and public engagement. Jeremy credits a 10,000 km cross-Canada bike ride climate action campaign he did in 2001 for instilling his passion for this work.

Noah Purves-Smith (he/him)
Senior Application Developer | SSG

Noah (he/him) is a climate activist disguised as a software developer. His work ranges from the system architecture and back-end development of modelling platforms, to building front-end tools to bring the models to life. He brings years of experience in modelling cumulative land-use effects, ecosystem goods and services, and integrated resources management as the architect and senior application developer on several spatial modeling tools that have been used globally. Noah is keenly interested in sustainability and built a passive house on a permaculture property using local materials. He enjoys playing piano, sailing, and mountain biking with his family when he’s not keeping tabs on his two boys, flock of heritage chickens, and cats Pippi and Max (not necessarily in that order).

What is the Municipal Toolkit

The Municipal Toolkit is a suite of free SSG-made tools for municipalities to use for climate action planning and implementation. The tools can be used to explore, calculate, and compare energy and emissions data.

Contact Us

Have questions about the LIUC Tool or want to learn more?