The Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC) released the findings of its Disclosure Challenge yesterday, and while the results show that participant buildings perform better in terms of energy use values when compared to NRCan averages, the bigger story is the lack of publicly available information about buildings’ performances.

The CaGBC study collected building information data—including energy use, GHG emissions, and water use—from over 700 buildings from five national building owners and managers: QuadReal, Triovest Realty Advisors Inc., Concert Properties Ltd., Colliers International, and the Minto Group. Combined, the companies oversee upwards of $50 billion in managed real estate assets—or approximately 10 percent of the estimated value of the large real estate holdings in Canada.

And while the CaGBC is pleased to have these owners partner with them in the Disclosure Challenge, the council says more must be done to deepen the knowledge base when it comes to buildings’ energy performance.

“Canada clearly needs to catch up quickly when it comes to benchmarking, reporting and disclosing data,” said CaGBC CEO and president Thomas Mueller. “Access to building performance data has enabled owners in other jurisdictions to make more informed choices about investing in retrofits. Canadian markets require data transparency to drive investment in efficiency programs and create demand for higher performing buildings.”

At present, Ontario is the only jurisdiction in Canada that mandates the disclosure of buildings’ energy performance. The province’s Energy & Water Reporting and Benchmarking regulation came into effect in 2017 and mandates that owners of buildings larger than 100,000 square feet report on their buildings’ energy and water use annually beginning on July 1, 2019. Those with buildings spanning 50,000 or more square feet will begin reporting in July 2020.

Although tracking a building’s performance and publicly disclosing the data is accepted practice in many European countries and U.S. states and cities, there is a reluctance among other Canadian provinces and territories to do so. This is in part due to the perception that doing so may cause push back from developers.

British Columbia has a voluntary benchmarking in initiative in place in seven cities. Edmonton launched a mandatory program in 2017, as did Winnipeg in 2019. Only Nova Scotia is developing a mandatory, province-wide program. The pilot for that program is currently under development.

According to data from the United Nations, buildings account for nearly one third of global greenhouse gas emissions. GaGBC says buildings in Vancouver and Toronto contribute to approximately 50 percent of each city’s current total emissions.

“For Canada to reach its emissions reduction targets and transition to a low-carbon economy over the next decade it is essential that existing buildings achieve significant energy efficiency improvements,” the council said in a release. “One of the barriers to meeting these goals is the current lack of publicly available data on commercial building performance in Canada.  

A report stemming from the Disclosure Challenge, Full Disclosure – Industry Leadership on Transparency, shows that of the more than 700 buildings reported in the challenge, 46 percent had complete performance data available. The report found large gaps in data from the retail and industrial sectors. Such gaps, says the CaGBC, are a detriment to tenants, investors and the members of the public large, who want information about sustainability commitments and the results achieved against these promises.

“When utility data is not available in a standardized digital format, customers cannot easily access and analyze valuable energy and water consumption information,” says Philippe Bernier, vice president of innovation and sustainability with Triovest Realty Advisors Inc. “Until a standard is adopted, individual Canadians, governments and organizations like Triovest will continue to be hampered in their benchmarking initiatives and efficiency pursuits due to the difficulties associated with accessing a digital view on performance.”

“Benchmarking is the first step in improving building performance,” added George Van Noten, senior vice president of property operations with Minto Properties Inc. “The Disclosure Challenge proves that industry collaboration can stimulate the types of retrofits required to promote significant emissions reductions. Our participation helped highlight changes we could make at the building level to improve performance and indicates to us the value of sharing our information, experiences and lessons learned with the industry as a whole.”

Disclosure findings

The Disclosure Challenge report measured more than 700 building assets spanning more than 11 square metres of space. Of these, 229 were office buildings, 151 industrial, 140 multi-residential, 120 warehouse, and the remainder a combination of retail, parking garages, multi-use properties and university buildings. Nearly 300 buildings in Ontario were surveyed.

Key findings from the report include:

• In comparison with NRCan average site energy use intensity values, overall participant office buildings performed approximately 10 percent better than the average office in Canada, whereas participant multi-residential buildings were about even with the average.
• Average energy use intensity for office and multi-residential buildings in the challenge were 286kWh/m2 and256kWh/m2 respectively. As compared to high-performance efficiency standards for new office and multi-residential buildings in Canada coming into force in different jurisdictions (with a standard of 100 kWh/m2), Disclosure Challenge office buildings were approximately 65 percent less efficient and multi-residential buildings were 61 percent less efficient.
• GHG emissions intensity varied across the country and was generally correlated with the electricity supply grid intensity. Office buildings in Ontario were 26 kgCO2e/m², while Ontario apartments were 29 kgCO2e/m².

Recommendations going forward

The CaGBC report issues a number of recommendations for change for government going forward. Chief among these is the urgent need to develop national building disclosure and benchmarking requirement guidelines, it says.

The council is also calling upon the Energy Star Portfolio Manager program to be used to standardize data collection and benchmarking, and for minimum standards to be set for collecting data on building profiles and performance, and reporting metrics.

“The Disclosure Challenge results demonstrate that without clear government mandates like those in Ontario, it is challenging to access enough data to enable policymakers and regulators to monitor how buildings across their jurisdictions are performing and assess the impacts of energy and GHG emissions reduction policies,” says Brian McCauley, President & Chief Executive Officer, Concert Properties. “We need that information in order to be able to ensure we are succeeding in lowering our GHG emissions.”

The full report is available on the CaBGC website.

A companion data visualization tool gives a sense of regional trends and variations.