When it comes to sustainability regulation, are older buildings being left behind?

By Lana Hall | The Registrar

Canadian building codes, tasked with regulating both the sustainability and the resilience of buildings considering climate change, face a reckoning. While new constructions are beholden to up to three sets of continuously updated building standards, older buildings, which make up most of the country’s residential and commercial stock, languish in regulatory limbo.

According to the The Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction (GlobalABC), buildings generate nearly 40% of global CO2 emissions. Reducing this figure will be key to tackling the effects of climate change, including Canada’s net-zero emissions by 2050 target. This means buildings have a two-pronged challenge. Not only do they have to meet standards that mitigate the effects of climate change—through regulation of sustainable building materials and energy performance, for example—but they must meet standards to be resilient against the impacts of climate change, such as potential flooding or high winds.

“ There’s little, if any, regulation that requires existing building stock to upgrade to current climate standards, whether related to energy performance or building resiliency.”

New buildings are regulated for sustainability at multiple levels. The National Building Code sets Canada-wide provisions for the design and construction of new buildings, such as fire protection, accessibility, heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning, among others. Each province has a system as well, such as the B.C. Building Code, designed to address requirements that may be specific to the climate of each province. Some municipalities are beginning to introduce standards too, but these are usually voluntary.

The Toronto Green Standard, for example, includes building recommendations, such as a certain level of stormwater management, which reduces strain on the city’s sewage system and standards for a thermal envelope, a representation of how long you can shelter within a building during a power outage. Developers are given incentives to meet these standards, such as lower development fees.

Governments update these codes and standards, be they federal, provincial/ territorial, or municipal, every few years. “You can think of it like a bar. The bar gets raised every few years, so we can build into the code higher and higher expectations around energy efficiency and energy performance,” says Michael Singleton, executive director of Sustainable Buildings Canada. “If you look at a new building that’s built now, just because of the building code and its improvements, it’s probably 50 or 60 per cent more efficient than a new building was in 1980.”

New buildings, however, are only part of the equation, says Singleton. There’s little, if any, regulation that requires existing building stock to upgrade to current climate standards, whether related to energy performance or building resiliency. An urban office tower constructed in the 1970s, for example, isn’t required to be retrofitted to meet today’s energy goals or to withstand current rates of flooding.

“In terms of making an impact on greenhouse gasses … it’s really the existing buildings that matter and they’re the ones that are much harder to tackle,” says Singleton. Upgrading an existing building depends on whether a developer is willing to cough up the cash to retrofit, an expensive and complex undertaking.

In 2016, the Pan-Canadian Framework for Clean Growth and Climate Change called for the development of a retrofit code that would create regulatory requirements for existing buildings. Recently, a national task force released a report summarizing recommendations for such a code, tentatively known as the Alterations for Existing Buildings (AEB). The AEB, however, isn’t expected to be unrolled until 2030 and its items will be voluntary, triggered only when a building is already being altered.

“There are layers of complexity,” says Singleton of retrofitting existing buildings. “Everything from technology to construction and all different kinds of decision makers involved.” A retrofit to meet today’s building standards for energy efficiency and resiliency could require serious disruption, including the replacement of windows, walls, and entire systems.

“If you want to encourage [developers] to undertake retrofits, then you have to give them an incentive,” he says. “Unless it’s fitting into their capital plan, they’re less likely to consider it.”