Sustainable Practices
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.
How to provide healthy environments & meet climate goals
Three key lessons for making buildings energy- and carbon-efficient and healthy.
Reaching net zero in the age of COVID-19
Optimizing ventilation and air handling systems is key to achieving net zero energy performance goals.
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 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 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 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.
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.
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 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.
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 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.
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 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.
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 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.
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.