New participants, new data for the CAGBC’s Disclosure Challenge

Four new participants have taken on Canada Green Building Council’s Disclosure Challenge. Brookfield Properties, Kingsett Capital,  SHAPE Properties, and Golden Properties and have joined inaugural participants, QuadReal Property Group, Triovest Realty Advisors Inc., Concert Properties Ltd., Colliers International, and the Minto Group, to publicly share their portfolio-wide energy, water and carbon data through the Energy Star Portfolio Manager™ platform.

The Disclosure Challenge brings together some of Canada’s largest real estate owners to publicly demonstrate the power and potential of sharing building data. Participants in the Challenge found that when this data is collected and shared internally, it can become a powerful tool to support significant emissions reductions, energy efficiency improvements, and cost savings, and when shared externally, it  supports overall market advancement.

The addition of these new participants brings the total amount of floor space publicly shared in the CaGBC Disclosure Challenge data visualization tool to 14.3 million m² , a 30 per cent increase from the inaugural year.

“By increasing awareness and transparency, the Disclosure Challenge demonstrates the value of publicly sharing building performance data, which can ultimately help identify buildings that are ripe for zero-carbon retrofits,” said Thomas Mueller, President and CEO of the Canada Green Building Council. “By publicly sharing benchmarking data, building owners are better able to make informed choices about where to invest their retrofit dollars, and policy makers are better able to develop programs that support effective actions. As we move closer to 2030 and the cost of carbon increases, the need for these deep retrofits will only intensify.”

Each participant submits a list of buildings to be included in the program; collects and submits portfolio-wide data for covered buildings to program administrators; identifies outlying buildings and submits additional contextualizing information; and works with the Challenge administrators to fill data gaps leading up to the disclosure of information.

By demonstrating the value of data transparency, the Disclosure Challenge is setting an industry-driven example for municipal and provincial jurisdictions that are interested in exploring and developing requirements for building performance data reporting. To date, only Ontario requires public reporting of building energy data, but Nova Scotia, the City of Vancouver and the City of Winnipeg have been actively working on benchmarking programs or plans.

Jamie Gray-Donald with QuadReal Property Group, a Disclosure Challenge participant,  says we achieve greater market development opportunity by increasing the transparency of the industry.

“We believe disclosing information about energy, water and carbon usage benefits owners, managers and tenants, and enables better decision-making leading to greater energy efficiency,” he said. “There is also growing demand from tenants for this type of disclosure and access to environmental information.”

You can explore the data collected up to 2019 in the CaGBC Disclosure Challenge data visualization tool, provided by Open Technologies. Insights from 2020 data, including the impact of the pandemic, will be made available in the fall.

For more information, visit cagbc.org/disclosurechallenge or contact media@cagbc.org.