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EfficiencyOne licensed for GRID energy benchmarking and disclosure software in Nova Scotia

June 1, 2021  By  Anthony Capkun



June 1, 2021 – Nova Scotia building owners and managers will soon have one-click access to information on how their buildings are performing, with the aim of helping them lower their properties’ GHG emissions.

OPEN Technologies—a British Columbia-based software developer of building energy efficiency solutions—licensed its GRID benchmarking and disclosure software to EfficiencyOne. Operating in Nova Scotia as Efficiency Nova Scotia, EfficiencyOne delivers electricity efficiency and conservation programs.

“The benchmarking pilot encourages building owners and managers to learn more about the energy performance of their buildings, allowing customers to make more-informed decisions, like which buildings would benefit most from energy efficiency and optimization projects,” explained Janet Tobin, Efficiency Nova Scotia.

“Adding the GRID software to our toolkit is one more way we can help ensure our incentive programs are reaching the right buildings, in the right locations, and helping customers realize the biggest benefits,” Tobin added.

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Efficiency Nova Scotia’s benchmarking pilot will use GRID to invite building owners and managers to voluntarily submit energy usage data, and learn how their properties rank on energy and emissions relative to similar building types elsewhere in the province.

“We’ve just completed a successful first year of using GRID in a pilot benchmarking program here in British Columbia, and we are excited to bring the same success to Nova Scotia through EfficiencyOne,” said Donovan Woollard, CEO, OPEN Technologies.

With EfficiencyOne, Nova Scotia joins 12 B.C. municipalities, the City of Calgary and the Canada Green Building Council in using GRID to manage their building benchmarking programs.

“We know that, in other jurisdictions, building energy benchmarking has been shown to reduce building energy and greenhouse gas reductions by as much as 8%,” said Chuck Porter, Minister of Energy & Mines. “We are pleased to provide EfficiencyOne with support to bring this powerful tool to Nova Scotia.”

In 2019, Natural Resources Canada funded OPEN Technologies to develop GRID as a tool that jurisdictions can use to “run rigorous and consistent benchmarking programs”.

GRID represents the next step in NRCan’s work to maximize the “rich potential” of Energy Star Portfolio Manager as a reporting tool for individual buildings, reports OPEN Technologies. By aggregating performance data from thousands of Portfolio Manager accounts, GRID serves to advance energy and emissions reporting and disclosure across Canada.

The Nova Scotia Energy Benchmarking Pilot was developed in partnership with NRCan, the Province of Nova Scotia and the Canada Green Building Council. The pilot focuses on commercial and institutional buildings (including multi-unit residential buildings).


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