RC110 JanFeb 2024 - Magazine - Page 36
LEGAL
Municipal initiatives
At the municipal level, both Toronto and Vancouver have
implemented requirements to ensure that buildings are
sustainable. Toronto’s Green Standard was 昀椀rst introduced
in 2006 as a voluntary standard for new development
and establishes sustainable design requirements for both
new private and city-owned developments. The Green
Standard consists of four performance tiers with supporting guidelines that promote sustainable site and building
design: tier 1 is required through the planning approval
process; and tiers 2 to 4 are higher level voluntary standards associated with 昀椀nancial incentives and are veri昀椀ed
post-construction.
The City of Vancouver has plans to transition to zero
emissions buildings in all new construction by 2030. This
will be achieved by setting limits on emissions and energy
use in new buildings, and reducing these limits over
time. The city’s Zero Emissions Buildings Plan establishes
speci昀椀c targets and actions to achieve zero emissions in
all new buildings by 2030. The city has also developed
Embodied Carbon Guidelines to reduce embodied emissions by 40 per cent by 2030 as part of the city’s climate
emergency declaration. Embodied carbon emissions occur
when building materials are produced, shipped, assembled, replaced, and demolished over a building’s life span.
Proponents must comply with the embodied carbon requirements in respect of new building permit applications
made on or after October 1, 2023.
The need for a more climate-resilient building sector
According to the Insurance Bureau of Canada, insured
damage for severe weather events reached $3.1 billion
in 2022, which ranks as the third worst year for insured
losses in Canadian history. Despite recent updates to the
2020 Model Codes, the impacts of more severe climate
events (such as 昀氀oods, wild昀椀res and windstorms) on
buildings are not addressed in the latest version of the
model codes. The reality is that building code regulations
across the country are not su昀케cient to meet the challenges
of climate change, often because the data they rely on
is outdated or of poor quality. Until now, federal and
provincial governments have been focused on energy
e昀케ciency, which has resulted in the issue of climateresilient buildings being placed on the back burner.
Discussions on the 2025 edition of the model codes are
already underway, so there is an opportunity for the
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among the world’s 昀椀rst zero carbon building standards.
The ZCB standards include a performance standard and a
design standard, which set out the parameters for low-carbon design and operational performance for all types of
buildings.
