CaGBC responds to proposed amendment to Ontario’s EWRB regulations

As part of CaGBC’s advocacy work, the Council recently weighed in on a proposed amendment to the Province of Ontario’s Energy & Water Reporting and Benchmarking (EWRB) regulation. EWRB put Ontario in a leadership position in Canada and across North America for its commitment to support and encourage benchmarking, as well as making it easier to obtain information on building utility consumption. However, proposed changes would stop the rollout to buildings under 100,000 ft².

While we recognize rolling out EWRB is not without challenges, we strongly encourage the Provincial government to reconsider given the potential savings in utility costs would far outweigh the estimated cost of compliance. Further, the CaGBC recommends investing in capacity building and training for smaller buildings and removing barriers to whole-building utility data.

With the release of our Full Disclosure: Industry Leadership on Transparency, voluntary participants QuadReal, Triovest Realty Advisors, Concert Properties Ltd., Colliers International, and the Minto Group demonstrated the value of data transparency. One of the key outcomes from these industry partners was a call for broad implementation of consistent building data disclosure and regulations.