Sustainable Practices

climate change

Real estate could reap climate action dividends

The global urgency for climate action has an upside companion in global opportunities for strategic investment that could improve people’s lives and yield sustainable returns.
healthy

How to provide healthy environments & meet climate goals

Three key lessons for making buildings energy- and carbon-efficient and healthy.
net zero

Reaching net zero in the age of COVID-19

Optimizing ventilation and air handling systems is key to achieving net zero energy performance goals.
Residential energy use re-emerges in Ontario's CDM plans

Heat is on for electricity demand projections

Electricity demand projections through the vaccination rollout period should take two contradictory factors into account, energy management specialists affirm.
Climate risk infuses real estate investment agendas

Climate risk infuses investment agendas

Canadian commercial real estate assets are comparatively less exposed to the dire physical threats that extreme weather poses or has already served up in other global regions.
ASHRAE

ASHRAE partners with CIBSE to encourage safe and sustainable environments

The agreement outlines how ASHRAE and CIBSE will work cooperatively to promote a more sustainable built environment through HVAC&R technology.
Multifamily energy performance

Multifamily energy performance typically vexing

Multifamily and industrial properties are routinely lumped together as favoured investment assets, but asset managers face divergent degrees of difficulty when they seek to mine value from energy performance.
BOMA Toronto's race2reduce aligns with climate capitalism

Real estate makes space for climate capitalism

The 2020 race2reduce field boasts more than 1,730 buildings encompassing 248 million square feet of space in common areas and tenant premises — an increase from 650 buildings covering 95 million square feet in 2019.
energy efficiency

Report suggests new building codes aren’t tough enough on energy efficiency

An Efficiency Canada report suggests a lack of mandatory air leak testing in buildings hinders attempts at net-zero energy efficiency.
Public disclosure of energy use and GHG intensity holds little appeal for building owners concerned about uninformed scrutiny

Public disclosure could foil energy reporting

The City of Winnipeg has invited commercial building owners and institutional facility managers to affix their Energy Star Portfolio Manager results on a publicly accessible map.
living walls

Survival prospects upbeat for living walls

Like humans, living walls might be overdue for a trim, but few are imperilled in the now largely empty surroundings of commercial and institutional buildings.
Setting a new standard

Setting a new standard at Ken Soble Tower

With mechanical systems nearing end of life, inadequate ventilation and other issues, the 50-year Ken Soble Tower was in critical need of an upgrade.
Ontario benchmarking

Smaller buildings spared Ontario benchmarking

Owners of smaller commercial and multi-residential buildings in Ontario will still be welcome to voluntarily share energy and water consumption data, but a looming deadline for mandatory disclosure has been withdrawn.
Climate risk profilers

Climate risk profilers wrangle fragmented data

A widening scope of resources can be tapped to build increasingly sophisticated risk profiles, but sustainability practitioners note that data is often fragmented and difficult to obtain.
climate action

Energy efficiency primed for climate action

Few signatories to the Paris Agreement have specifically listed energy efficiency targets in required national plans for meeting their commitments so Three Percent Club founders see plenty of room to capture untapped emissions reductions.
GRESB

GRESB gets lift from ESG tailwind

Major Canadian players figure among both GRESB investor members with full access to the data and the larger complement of management members that report and are benchmarked through the real estate assessment.
carbon zero

Interest in zero carbon buildings on the rise

After one year of operation, the Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC)’s Zero Carbon Building (ZCB) Program has marked several milestones.