Blog

At Coolearth we began calling for the Energy and Water benchmarking almost three years ago, so it is heartening to see it implemented last week.  At that time we thought the most likely initiative would be  via the City of Toronto, but since then Toronto partnered up with Ontario to implement a province-wide policy.  We published a White Paper on the topic entitled “Toronto Energy Disclosure By-Law”  to outline what building owners could expect on the topic.  Some of our key findings, which still hold true are:

Summary of Key Points:

1.) Energy Disclosure Laws are coming to Canada

2.) Benchmarking and tracking makes visible trends and opportunities to save on utility costs.

3.) Significant opportunity to address leading GHG emissions generator in Toronto.

4.) Energy modelling and data-driven analyses of opportunities can help with capital expense planning

5.) Sustainable building improvements can act as a hedge against increase energy costs.

6.) Stakeholders, including owners, managers, tenants, and lessees can save money instantly by changing behaviour and educating about sustainable practices.

The Ontario Energy and Water Benchmarking program, which begins this year (2017) covers: commercial, multi-unit residential and some industrial buildings 50,000 square feet and above. “Most industrial buildings, i.e. manufacturing facilities, and all agricultural facilities would not be included.”  A more detailed breakwdown of the proposal from the Ontario Governments site:
 

• – Building/property owners would be required to report energy, water, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, as well as other building characteristic information on an annual basis using  ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager.
• – Phased-in over three years, starting with the largest buildings.
• – Requires electricity, natural gas and water utilities to make whole building, aggregated, consumption data available to building owners.
• – Public disclosure (on Ontario’s Open Data website) one year after initial reporting year for each of the three phases. Some data will not be disclosed publicly (e.g. site/source energy use, total GHG emissions and gross floor area on a building by building basis).
• – Building owners would be required to confirm in Portfolio Manager that the reported data is accurate.
• – Verification by a third party would not be required under the proposed regulation.
• – No requirement for Conservation and Demand Management (CDM) Plans in initial years of reporting.

Obviously we feel that while this is a great step, Energy and Water Benchmarking should be expanded to include as many buildings as possible.  In aggregate, detached residential homes contribute a substantial amount of aggregate GHG and use a lot of energy.  Having a program that also creates disclosure of energy-use for residential buildings to potential buyers, lessee, or tenants has the power to help drive even more substantial increases in energy efficiency in our built environment.