About 85 per cent of waste from Ontario's businesses, public institutions, residential buildings with six or more units and construction/demolition sites ends up in landfill, including a vast amount of recyclable material.

Daily vigilance is central to achieving operational energy savings, but rare decisions typically have the most acute carbon consequences in buildings.

Personal liability is a mounting possibility for directors, officers and supervisors of organizations that run afoul of environmental regulators or are on the losing side of civil litigation.

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.

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

Optimizing ventilation and air handling systems is key to achieving net zero energy performance goals.

Securities regulators wish to confirm that the representations registrants are making about the incorporation of ESG principles in their investment decision-making processes are consistent with their actual policies and procedures.

COVID-19 has intensified pressure to support physical, social and emotional well-being within the built environment, but many investors, owners and managers were already embracing healthy building principles ahead of pandemic-triggered challenges.

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.

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.

Technically, three real estate entities are ranked in the 2020 Clean200 list of publicly traded companies, but just two of them have conventional commercial real estate portfolios.

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.

The mounting consequences of being stuck fast in the wrong place for an extended wrong time begin with soaring insurance premiums and end with stranded assets.

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.

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

LEED v4.1 O+M’s updates focus on performance outcomes, and not on prescriptive measures to improve performance.

Carleton University expects to fire up a new co-generation plant at its Ottawa-based campus next spring as part of its sophomore energy master plan.