A promised $2 billion investment in large-scale building retrofits will be central to the Canadian government’s job creation ambitions. Energy efficiency champions have plenty of ideas of how and where the funds could be best leveraged.

After scrambling to recalibrate their models in the early days of COVID-19-related shutdowns, analysts with Ontario's Independent Electricity System Operator faced more uncharted territory when the hot weather arrived.

Proposals address a range of issues that are likely to be of interest to listed real estate entities and their investors, as well as start-up ventures and other publicly traded service providers to the industry.

Canada Emergency Commercial Rent Assistance will be offered for a sixth month. The announcement comes eight days after the portal for new applications for the relief program appeared to be closed.

With the August 31 deadline for first-time applications for Canada Emergency Commercial Rent Assistance (CECRA) now passed, the three-month program that evolved into five months of relief is closed to new recipients.

Many hydro accounts specifically tied to the common areas of multi-residential buildings will no longer qualify for the 31.8 per cent rebate beginning in November 2020.

A temporary adjustment to Ontario’s electricity pricing scheme eliminates cost-saving opportunities that many operators of large commercial buildings were anticipating this summer.

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.

Commuters’ willingness to jump on the bus, light-rail car or subway is expected to be a driving factor in repopulating office space in some major North American markets, including Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.

The timing might have been opportune for uptake of the measure — provided it was adopted into provincial and territorial building codes — because it would have applied broadly in what is currently Canada’s most buoyant commercial real estate sector.

For Class A consumers, cost-saving potential will be diminished even if they successfully curtail demand during the five peak hours since those peaks are expected to be lower than usual.

Thus far, in most markets, there’s been no spurt of office sublets or rent discounts that conventionally signify an economic downturn, but there has been a flurry of conjecture about the forces COVID-19 may have unleashed.

At least 84 Canadian commercial buildings have been abuzz during protracted COVID-19-related business shutdowns. They house the data centres that have literally underpinned the continued functioning of the economy.

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

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.

Commercial real estate operators are seeking advice across a wide spectrum of expertise as they deploy their crisis management, business continuity and recovery plans.

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.