Our current Prime Minister is our COVID Prime Minister. The next Prime Minister will be our climate change prime minister. They will be the PM that meets the UN climate targets?or doesn?t. What should we be looking for in the party platforms, particularly with regards to existing buildings?which represent the biggest carbon emission problem, and the hardest one to solve"
Over the past several years, Toronto 2030 District has embarked on a project to map the costs of getting buildings to zero operating emissions. The project uses a section of downtown Toronto comprising 300 million square feet of floor space as a testbed. This district includes most of the building types in Canada, albeit in different proportions to the country as a whole. Our group of 47 private and public sector partners looks at this issue from the point of view of the options and costs to individual building owners: we don?t think it?s an option to say ?it?s too expensive,? but rather, we have embraced the goal of showing how we can pay for it. What are the climate impacts of individual building decisions, if scaled up to the entire building stock" This is where politicians have power and responsibility, so an election is a critical time to address this issue.
Buildings are the biggest asset most people and companies have. The service life of a building envelope averages 30 to 70 years. Mechanical system service life averages 15 to 30 years. Practically, building elements are not incrementally ...