Photo by Jonathan Riley on Unsplash
Climate change has emerged as a critical issue, and yet Canada?s politicians (of all stripes) are ignoring the easiest, the fastest, the least expensive and the most effective means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions?energy efficient buildings.
The design, construction and operation of our buildings accounts for

at least 25 percent of Canada?s emissions. It is now possible to create and even retrofit buildings so they are zero carbon?adding absolutely no emissions to the atmosphere. If this standard were applied to all buildings in Canada, then our emissions would be reduced by a full quarter.
Such a project would be enormous and almost impossible in the short term, but the federal government could?and should?lead the way. The Canadian government owns, operates and/or leases 33 million square metres of space which consumes roughly the same amount of energy as the City of Surrey, BC. The current government hopes to be carbon neutral by 2025 but insists they will purchase clean energy to reach this goal. Deep retrofits would be a far more economical and beneficial approach. Here?s why: one in every 13 Canadians is employed in the AEC industry and these are jobs that can?t be outsourced to other countries. Buying solar panels or wind turbines from other countries doesn?t really create a lot of economic activity in Canada, but retrofitting that much space would create thousands of high value jobs for Canadians.
Moreover, this project coul...