What is the LEED Canada Initiative? Is it a new rating system?
How will the next generation of LEED Canada be different from today’s rating system?
What does LEED Canada Initiative mean to current LEED Canada Certification candidates?
How is the Canadian building industry involved in this initiative?
Q. What is the LEED Canada Initiative? Is it a new rating system?
The Council wants to be the catalyst for a collaborative, industry-wide creation of a rating system that puts the benefits of green building within reach of any building owner or manager in Canada. The LEED Canada Initiative is not a new rating system, but the path to make green building pervasive; fulfilling CaGBC’s goal of certifying 100,000 buildings and 1 million homes in Canada by 2015. The initiative is a multi-year development process towards the next generation of LEED Canada that engages all sectors of the building industry through a number of committees and taskforces, and through a formal consultation process that will invite input from the broader community and CaGBC membership along the way. What is working with the rating system will not change. What will change includes aspects such as user friendliness, the ability to inform building performance improvement investments, and a system to track actual measured performance.
Q. How will the next generation of LEED Canada be different from today’s rating system?
Instead of a one-time certification, the next generation of LEED Canada will offer a full life-cycle building performance management system. It will apply to all building types—new and existing—and be web-based. The key goal is to make the LEED certification streamlined, faster and easier to use, while maintaining its technical rigour. LEED Canada will be scalable across building portfolios and communities, and offer building performance management capabilities from design to disassembly, and measure actual energy and water demand. For the next few years, the CaGBC will collaborate with hundreds of pilot participants from all building sectors to develop actual performance baselines, starting with K-12 schools, and utilities, government and commercial buildings.
The current version of the LEED Canada tool is a one-time intervention, certifying a building at a single point in time. Although useful, this one-time measure doesn’t allow for ongoing assessment of a building’s efficiency. The next generation will address GHG emissions and climate change in a few ways.
One new feature is the performance management capability that will support building owners and managers looking to assess and identify improvements to the energy and environmental efficiency through the life of their buildings. Given that technology improvements will continually allow for better energy and environmental efficiency, the baselines for these efficiencies will always be moving up, informing building owners of new measured performance for similar properties. Data reporting of certified buildings will comprise actual performance measurements and associated GHG emission savings. This information will be part of a national database that provides an accurate account of the environmental impacts of buildings, and that can provide useful insight during the development of incentive programs by government and utility companies.
Q. What does LEED Canada Initiative mean to current LEED Canada Certification candidates?
This initiative doesn’t affect current certifications or certification candidates. A LEED Gold rating will still be a LEED Gold. Registrants will continue to be certified under the current system until the updated rating system becomes available for their building sector. They will be welcome – but not required – to transition to the updated LEED Canada rating system and benefit from lifecycle performance management and other enhanced features.
Q. How is the Canadian building industry involved in this initiative?
The Canadian building industry is key to the successful introduction of the next generation of LEED Canada. Starting with owners and managers of K-12 schools , utilities, government and commercial buildings, these participants are collaborating in its development through a pilot program, where they will assess and evaluate the updated certification tool, to ensure it will meet the market’s needs.
Q. How does the CaGBC plan to achieve its 2015 goal of certifying 100,000 buildings and 1 million homes?
This is an ambitious goal, but the building industry can play a significant role in lowering Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions by as much as a third of the country’s total reduction target. Achieving this goal will require industry-wide participation, and that’s why we’ve made the LEED Canada Initiative to be so collaborative and feedback-based. Furthermore, a feature of the next generation of the LEED Canada rating system is its scalability. A developer or owner of multiple buildings can scale certification across the entire building inventory, rather than have to go through individual certifications for each building.
Q. Is CaGBC actively lobbying government bodies to encourage regulations or tax benefits in support of green buildings?
It’s not part of CaGBC’s immediate plans to lobby government but we continue to dialogue with governments at every level to raise awareness of the role buildings can play in reducing GHG emissions and helping Canada meet its overall reduction targets. The LEED Canada rating system is a transformation tool that’s voluntary to use and is being pushed forward by the industry, not mandated by government.
Q. Why are you changing LEED?
The LEED rating system is not changing, it’s evolving based on feedback from our members and the industry to include all types of buildings, a faster and more streamlined certification process, and performance management capabilities through the life of a building.
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