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Commercial Institutional News
New CaGBC framework to “incentivize the design of highly efficient” buildings

November 4, 2016 - “By embarking on this important initiative, the [Canada Green Building Council] is providing the market with a state-of-the-art guideline and, soon, the third-party verification and support required to make net zero carbon buildings a reality in the near future,” said president & CEO Thomas Mueller of CaGBC’s release of a Zero Carbon Buildings Framework.

November 4, 2016  By  Anthony Capkun



CaGBC says it consulted about 50 individuals representing 40 organizations in the building sector. The resulting framework facilitates “broad participation across a range of building types and sizes”, insists the council, “provides a clear definition” for zero carbon buildings, and establishes several components for the evaluation of building carbon footprints. Among them:

• Energy intensity metrics to incentivize the design of highly efficient, reliable and resilient buildings.
• A peak energy demand metric to encourage the use of peak shaving measures.

The next phases of the Zero Carbon Initiative include the identification of specific pathways to zero carbon, a building pilot program, and the development of a verification program to be completed and launched by CaGBC by the end of Q2 2017.

The council says this framework is the first stage of a broader CaGBC Zero Carbon Buildings Initiative to push for lower-carbon commercial, institutional and high-rise residential buildings, in support of Canada’s efforts to reduce GHG emissions by 30% by 2030.

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