The politics of calculative tools in practice: Climate budgeting in Edmonton

Abstract

Climate budgeting aims to integrate carbon accounting into municipal financial budgeting, promising to align annual spending decisions with long-term emissions targets. Yet limited attention has been given to how this calculative framework operates within existing administrative practices and contested political contexts. This article examines the City of Edmonton’s 2022 Carbon Budget, the first municipal climate budget implemented in North America. Drawing on interviews, policy documents, and observations of public budget deliberations, it traces how carbon metrics were developed, applied to budget profiles, and interpreted by administrators and councillors. The analysis finds that efforts to translate climate impacts into conventional fiscal formats encountered substantial methodological limits. Most investments could not be quantified, indirect and longer-term effects remained excluded, and aggregated results suggested proposed climate investments would have little effect on Edmonton’s emissions pathway. Rather than increasing transparency or building consensus, the project intensified disagreements over municipal responsibilities, public support, and the justification of climate spending. Comparison with Oslo demonstrates that climate budgeting’s effects may depend less on technical design than on the political authority, administrative capacity, and institutional relationships within which it operates. Climate budgeting should be understood not as a transferable accounting solution, but as a situated deliberative framework that makes some climate impacts visible while reorganizing, rather than resolving, political contestation.