Ottawa’s Better Buildings Strategy moves forward with GRID

The City of Ottawa has become the latest jurisdiction to adopt our GRID benchmarking and disclosure software for the Better Buildings Ottawa benchmarking program! Building owners and managers in our capital city will soon have one-click access to detailed information on how their buildings are performing, helping them to lower their properties’ greenhouse gas emissions. GRID’s powerful analysis and data-visualization capabilities will provide valuable energy insights to those owners to drive more informed investments in their assets when the time comes. It will also provide the City of Ottawa with new insights on which interventions in which buildings will drive the greatest energy and carbon reductions. 

Read the full release for more.

British Columbia’s new Clean Building Tax Credit

The Province of British Columbia has just announced the Clean Building Tax Credit, a measure which will make energy retrofits for commercial and multi-unit housing buildings more affordable. The credit will save building owners 5% on the cost of improvements to building envelopes and systems such as heating, ventilation, and air conditioning. The tax credit will help to support the province’s current emissions reduction goal of over 50% by 2030. 

If you are a building owner, find out how you can access the Clean Buildings Tax Credit here! 

Building Benchmark BC enters Year 3!

Building Benchmark BC is Canada’s largest, and most successful, voluntary energy benchmarking program, and our team is now collecting data for Year 3. The program started in early 2020 with 6 founding jurisdictional partners, which quickly doubled to 12 by the end of Year 1. In year 2, the program expanded to 17 partner jurisdictions from all over British Columbia, and we are thrilled to be welcoming 4 new partners for Year 3: Nanaimo, Esquimalt, Port Moody, and Port Coquitlam. We also have over 70 private and public sector organizations participating.

Stay tuned for more announcements as we welcome our new partners and participants, and don’t forget to check out the findings from Year 2! 

Seeking Industry Insights on the Heat Pump Boom

In case you missed it - the Homeowner Retrofit Journey Report is now available on our website! The report, a collaboration with Vancity, highlights the factors that inform homeowner decisions to upgrade or replace their space and water heating equipment, and the barriers to starting or finishing retrofits. Find the report at opentech.eco/stuck.

We are now interviewing heat pump suppliers and installers to better understand the homeowner retrofit journey from their industry perspective. If you are looking to grow your heat pump business and would be willing to chat, please reach out to justine@opentech.eco.  

If you are interested in more on this topic, check out the recording from our DiscoverEE webinar in May, and watch this space! 

Project Update: The Affordable Housing Navigator

The first round of market research interviews, conducted in collaboration with UX design firm OXD, has now concluded for the Affordable Housing Navigator! The Affordable Housing Navigator is a webtool funded by the CMHC’s Housing Supply Challenge that helps non-profit housing organizations to identify viable design pathways for new, high performance housing projects. 

While this phase of interviews has closed, we will be exploring other opportunities for input in the coming months. If you or someone you know is interested in future participation, please send an email to justine@opentech.eco. We look forward to hearing from you, and stay tuned for more project updates! 

New and Notable

A few news stories, reports, opportunities, and other resources that recently caught our eye:

• C40’s Women4Climate mentorship program is accepting applications until August 14th! The program provides mentorship and networking opportunities for self-identified women working on climate issues in the City of Vancouver. 

• Efficiency Canada’s latest poll demonstrates that Canadians are in support of government funding to expand energy efficiency in rental and low income housing. Read more about the results. 

• Check out Passive Buildings Canada’s latest report on the embodied emissions of building materials in Canada!

• In case you missed it, ZebX hosted a Decarb Lunch on Vancouver’s new Green Buildings Regulations. You can read all about it and access the slides here!