The Canada Green Building Council (CAGBC) is saluting low-carbon contributors with its 2024 awards for advancing and exemplifying sustainability and high performance in the built environment. Honours were bestowed to four individuals, four buildings and two organizations during CAGBC’s annual Building Lasting Change conference in Toronto last week.

“The CAGBC awards are a showcase of the market’s commitment to green building,” maintains Thomas Mueller, the organization’s president and chief executive officer. “This year’s winners represent the best of Canada’s sustainability leaders and the most innovative green and low-carbon projects in the country.”

Josée Lupien, president and co-founder of Quebec-based Vertima, a third-party consulting firm that steers projects and companies through the environmental certification process, received CAGBC’s lifetime achievement award. She is a LEED Fellow, accredited for both interior design and construction (ID+C) and building design and construction (BD+C) and is also a WELL accredited professional, whom Mueller characterizes as a “stalwart supporter” of CAGBC’s zero carbon building standards.

“Josée Lupien is a visionary and pioneer who, over her 20-plus year career, has advanced green building in Québec and Canada,” he asserts. “Beyond her numerous professional achievements, the industry has benefited from Josée’s tireless commitment to education. We’re privileged to have her as an active CAGBC member and as part of our faculty of subject-matter experts.”

Other individual recipients of the 2024 leadership awards include:

• Sarah Petrevan, vice president, sustainability, with the Cement Association of Canada, commended for green building leadership;
• Shefali Panse, associate product manager with CertainTeed Canada, recognized as emerging leader; and
• Lyle Scott, principal of the consulting firm, Footprint, honoured for committed voluntary technical advisory services to the CAGBC.

Petrevan is noted for bringing attention to the issue of embodied carbon and promoting low-carbon building materials, both through her current focus on low-carbon concrete and previously as the founder of the Buy Clean Industry Alliance. She also lends her expertise to CAGBC’s advisory panel on carbon capture and utilization in cementitious building materials.

Panse holds a Master of Science degree in chemical engineering from University of California, Berkeley, and has been a key player in the development of CertainTeed’s zero-carbon drywall manufacturing plant in Montreal. The project, which is a first for North America, includes electrification of plant equipment and systems to recycle and reconstitute used drywall.

Scott has participated in a diverse range of CAGBC’s committees and taskforces over the past 17 years, including as a past chair of the LEED Canada steering committee and now as the first chair of the new LEED advisory committee. He is a mechanical engineer specializing in energy efficiency, facilities management and sustainable development.

Two organizations also received 2024 leadership awards. The Humber College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning was named green building visionary for commitment to sustainability in the development, management and operations of its buildings and campus. The Region of Peel’s Office of Climate Change and Energy Management was recognized in the government leadership category for guiding the Region’s corporate net-zero-energy building policy and standards for new construction.

Turning to 2024’s exemplary buildings, awards were bestowed in four categories this year:

• The Neil Campbell Rowing Centre in St. Catharines, Ontario, was recognized for zero carbon design;
• 25 St. Clair Avenue East, Toronto, was named the leading deep carbon retrofit project;
• Centennial College, Toronto, received the new construction award for the expansion of its main campus building, which incorporates a five-storey, mass timber housing student services; and
• Simon Fraser University’s 90-unit family housing complex on its campus in Burnaby, British Columbia, won in the inspired home category.

Both the Neil Campbell Rowing Centre and 25 St. Clair Avenue East are certified under the CAGBC zero carbon building design standard.