The Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC) launches the Disclosure Challenge – an initiative to promote data transparency in the Canadian real estate market.
The challenge calls for the industry to publicly disclose energy, carbon and water data from buildings.
According to CaGBC public energy disclosure is in its “infancy” in Canada. The organization hopes the challenge will encourage broader uptake of benchmarking programs across the country in order to catch up to many European and American states and cities that have been requiring building energy disclosure and benchmarking for years.
Another goal of CaGBC is to demonstrate the value of data transparency and remove barriers within the wider real estate community, which will enable more municipal and provincial jurisdictions to move forward with requirements for the public reporting of building performance data.
“When collected and shared, building performance data is a powerful tool propelling Canada’s retrofit economy. With the Disclosure Challenge, we hope to increase understanding of how buildings are performing and where they can be improved. This, in turn, will help governments identify the sectors and building types most in need of retrofit to achieve maximum emissions reductions,” said Thomas Mueller, president and chief executive officer at CaGBC in the press release.
Endorsed by The Institute for Market Transformation (IMT) in Washington, D.C., a pioneer in the field of data disclosure, the CaGBC Disclosure Challenge was made possible through financial contributions from the Government of Canada (Natural Resources Canada). Additional support was provided by QuadReal Property Group and the Real Estate Foundation of B.C.
The press release says the results of the initiative will be made publicly available at CaGBC’s Building Lasting Change conference in May, and a final report will be released in the fall of 2019, with key findings and recommendations on next steps to drive greater energy disclosure adoption.
QuadReal, Triovest Realty Advisors Inc. and Concert Properties Ltd. are among the first to volunteer to participate in the challenge.
