The Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC) and the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC) have recommended changes to the National Energy Code for Buildings (NECB) and the National Building Code (NBC) with the view of further reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) in Canada.

In a letter to Codes Canada, the groups offer three principal recommendations.

The first is that the amended codes should address carbon emissions associated with construction and operations—not just energy efficiency. According to the groups, building operations in Canada account for 17 percent of the country’s carbon emissions. Construction and materials account for a further 11 percent.

Since energy performance on its own does not account for a building’s entire carbon footprint, failing to account for carbon emissions in construction and operations would leave the code incomplete.

“If the goal of the code improvements is to reduce carbon emissions, we must move towards terms such as ‘total carbon footprint’ and ‘carbon performance’ alongside ‘energy use intensity’ or ‘energy performance’,” says the letter.

The groups’ second recommendation: to include operational GHG emission metrics. Since proposed changes to the NECB will reduce the need for thermal energy to heat buildings, a project’s choice of clean heating sources becomes influential to its emissions footprint. The groups would like to see the code adapted to compare the relative merits of heating fuels, based on their carbon intensities.

“There are several low-carbon options to heat buildings, and regulations should be adjusted to send a clear signal to building designers that these are preferable and also affordable,” says the letter. “Setting a carbon intensity budget gives developers an incentive to connect to potential low-carbon heat sources (e.g., electricity, district energy systems) while still providing the flexibility to use carbon-intensive fuels for high-value uses like cooking, peak heating demand, or back-up heating.”

The groups’ final point is to develop embodied-carbon metrics for analyzing the performances of proposed buildings against baseline models. They recommend incorporating reporting requirements into the NCB so that the performance of buildings can be quantified at various stages of their life-cycles, and compared against baseline models to demonstrate carbon performance.

“The upfront carbon associated with production and construction is particularly important given the timescale for eliminating emissions; many construction materials being used today can be expected to still be in service beyond 2050,” say the groups.