Commercial and industrial electricity customers will pay the differential above 11.5 cents per kilowatt-hour in added monthly increments beginning in January 2021.

Despite a steep drop in province-wide energy consumption due to COVID-19 triggered business shutdowns, many building owners/managers expect a more modest flow-through dip in operating costs.

The facility brings together a multi-purpose satellite fire station, a live-fire training building, and a municipal emergency operations centre.

Along with measures to discourage spurious lawsuits, the legislation has implications for commercial real estate operators and any organization with potential scofflaws among its employees or membership.

It's still unclear how the process of securing environmental approvals for combined heat and power systems will be streamlined, but the Ontario government's recent pledge has been greeted enthusiastically in the buildings sector.

The move concludes the process begun five months ago when the newly elected United Conservative Party government repealed the carbon tax and eliminated the funding source for the incentives.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing says the underlying principle of improving accessibility will be maintained, and connects the revisions to the government's commitment to cut red tape that is slowing down the production of new housing.

Ontario draws on the legacy of more than a dozen years of programming, while Energy Efficiency Alberta has had little time to capture public or capital planners' attention.

With the largest share of relatively inexpensive lighting upgrades completed, finding additional energy savings gets more complicated and costly. However, significant paybacks are projected from the increase in upfront program costs.

The current formula for allocating global adjustment costs is generally thought to be locked in for at least another year. Changes in the conservation and demand management regime are unfolding more rapidly.

More stringent fines and an extended period for prosecutions are slated to come into force 30 days after the Ontario legislature adopts the Budget Measures Act.

Local distribution companies have been the prime drivers of the Conservation First Framework, tasked with collectively attaining 7 million megawatt-hours of energy savings in the 2015-2020 period.

It's estimated that equitable apportionment could push residential rates 2.2 per cent higher than the proposed 1.8 per cent increase for fiscal year 2020, while commercial rates would drop and industrial rates remain the same.

The action is included in a list of initiatives associated with Bill 66, the proposed Restoring Ontario's Competitiveness Act, even though none of the bill's dozens of legislative amendments pertain to the Assessment Act.

Prospective developers of community hubs will no longer get extra time to negotiate the purchase of surplus properties the Ontario government is selling.

Selected provisions enabling some of Ontario's key energy and water conservation programs will be transferred to the Electricity Act.

Workplace health and safety practitioners advise that measures to safeguard building services personnel from heat stress should be fairly straightforward.