For many years now, Canada’s green building community has been thinking about ways to limit the negative impact of buildings on the environment. In 2016, the Green Building Council of Canada (CaGBC) published the article Buildings Solutions to Climate Change. “Over the years, several national and international reports have concluded that energy efficiency improvements in the building sector offer the most efficient approach to reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions, like no other sector of the economy can,” wrote President and Chief Executive Officer Thomas Mueller.
Energy efficiency is therefore at the heart of several bold approaches fostering innovation in the building and construction sectors. For example, the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification is an internationally recognized brand of excellence for sustainable buildings in more than 132 countries. In Canada, it has been helping to redefine sustainable buildings since 2002. “LEED has a huge impact. When architects started to strive to design buildings that were not only LEED Bronze, but LEED Platinum, it really stimulated an interest in the field,” noted David Suzuki, adding that the goal today is zero-energy or positive-energy buildings.
“Over the past decade, green building certification programs have raised the bar when it comes to energy efficiency, renewable energy and sustainability practises, and have changed the way we design, build, maintain and operate buildings,” explains the CaGBC.
In May 2017, the Council launched the Zero Carbon Building Initiative to support Canada’s efforts in reducing GHG emissions by 2030.