This article was published by The Energy Mix on July 18, 2024.
By Gaye Taylor
Housing projects receiving federal dollars must be mandated to meet the highest energy efficiency and emissions standards in Canada’s building codes so that all new homes are climate resilient and meet zero-carbon goals, states an open letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
While Ottawa’s housing plan acknowledges the need for change in the way Canada builds homes, it lacks rigorous performance criteria to ensure new housing is built right the first time, states the letter posted on LinkedIn by Efficiency Canada and signed by the Canada Green Building Council, the Pembina Institute, the Trottier Family Foundation, and several other prominent organizations.
“Once constructed, our buildings need to be affordable to heat and cool,” states the letter. “They must protect us from extreme heat and power outages, exacerbated by climate change.”
But national model building codes no longer simply define a minimum standard, writes Efficiency Canada. “They include progressively higher performance tiers that lead to the nation’s net-zero goals.”
The top tier of Canada’s 2020 building code already encompasses “net-zero energy-ready (NZEr)”—a term that describes builds designed, modelled, and constructed to be net-zero energy, but lacking access to on- or offsite renewable sources.
“A core aspect of NZE ‘readiness’ is improved air sealing, increased insulation levels, and high-performance windows and doors to reduce thermal demand and facilitate appropriately sized space and water heating equipment,” Efficiency Canada explains on its website. A fully NZE building produces as much clean energy as it consumes, and is expected to be “80 per cent more efficient than a new building constructed to today’s building code minimum.”
However, under the 2020 requirements, a builder or homeowner “could offset energy produced by gas with solar panels and still be ‘net zero energy,’ but not necessarily net-zero emissions,” Brendan Haley, Efficiency Canada’s senior director of policy strategy, told The Energy Mixin an email. The upcoming 2025 versions of the codes will address this loophole with greenhouse gas (GHG) performance levels that reach net-zero emissions.
These levels “will take into consideration the operational emissions of the building that are significantly impacted by heating system fuel options of fossil fuels versus electric or renewable fuels,” Haley said. “Adding GHG performance levels helps make sure buildings are both energy efficient and use low- to zero-carbon fuels.”
Using the national codes “to define how to build for the future” will also help ensure that buildings are not only built right the first time, but also as quickly as possible, he added.
“Net-zero emission building codes and performance criteria for publicly financed housing can be part of a clear roadmap for the building sector to prepare supply chains to avoid future shortages and bottlenecks,” wrote Haley in a post for Policy Options last September.
Efficiency Canada says Canada should require that buildings constructed with federal government funds—via programs like the Apartment Construction Loan Program, the Affordable Housing Fund, and others—consider material emissions, and meet the 2020 codes NZEr top tier and the top level for operational GHG emission performance in the 2025 codes.
“This will create an immediate market for high performance building practices and help meet the 2021 Liberal platform commitment to ‘accelerate the development of the national net-zero emissions model building code for 2025 adoption’,” the organization states.
The letter also recommends “requiring that provinces and territories receiving funds from the Housing Infrastructure Fund progressively adopt higher tiers of the 2020 and 2025 building codes leading towards adopting the top tiers for energy efficiency and operational GHG emissions in 2030.”
“The affordable housing we need won’t be affordable unless it is energy efficient and zero-carbon,” the signatories say. “Integrating Canada’s building codes into the Housing Plan will make our homes affordable, healthy, and resilient.”
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