Blog (link)

June 2021

Overview

• Green Development Standards (GDS) can be used to create incentives or reduce barriers to developments that deliver environmental, social, and economic benefits.
• Municipalities seeking to advance climate action can use Green Development Standards to prepare the building sector, and the workforce, to deliver high-performance buildings at scale.
• Green Development Standards show senior governments that Canadian municipalities want immediate action when it comes to more stringent building energy standards.

Over 500 Canadian municipalities have declared a climate emergency and are now seeking ways to act on those declarations, this includes immediately improving the energy performance of new buildings. As these communities await the delayed proposed 2020 model codes, Green Development Standards (GDS) can act as a low-cost, effective way to act on their declarations.

Aligning their GDS with the proposed 2020 model codes, and taking a regional approach to GDS, can help municipalities prepare their local buildings sector for Canada's net-zero economy while capturing community benefits such as good local jobs and healthy, comfortable, and resilient buildings for all. And, as the delayed proposed 2020 model codes come into action, GDS can support the market's acceleration from lower tiers of the Code thereby helping to ensure that the market is able to advance towards higher tiers within a wider geography and the intended timeframe.