Although they increasingly rely on professional service providers to keep up with the complexities of compliance, owners/managers ultimately carry the responsibility for life safety and bear the brunt of enforcement.

Efficiency Canada’s second annual provincial scorecard takes a detailed look at commitment, outcomes and potential related to 42 energy efficiency indicators, and charts progress, or backsliding, against last year’s results.

As announced in the provincial budget, the Ontario government plans to equalize the business education tax (BET) rate at 0.88 per cent for 2021, equating to a $450-million tax cut province-wide.

The office remains a preferable environment for the majority of workers who find working from home every day an unfavourable option.

For Class A consumers, cost-saving potential will be diminished even if they successfully curtail demand during the five peak hours since those peaks are expected to be lower than usual.

Collaborative spaces will take on new importance as flexibility remains a key factor moving forward when reinventing and reopening the workplace.

The CECRA program is voluntary. Not all eligible landlords will necessarily take advantage of this program for various reasons.

Commercial and industrial electricity customers will pay the differential above 11.5 cents per kilowatt-hour in added monthly increments beginning in January 2021.

Despite a steep drop in province-wide energy consumption due to COVID-19 triggered business shutdowns, many building owners/managers expect a more modest flow-through dip in operating costs.

The facility brings together a multi-purpose satellite fire station, a live-fire training building, and a municipal emergency operations centre.

Along with measures to discourage spurious lawsuits, the legislation has implications for commercial real estate operators and any organization with potential scofflaws among its employees or membership.

It's still unclear how the process of securing environmental approvals for combined heat and power systems will be streamlined, but the Ontario government's recent pledge has been greeted enthusiastically in the buildings sector.

The move concludes the process begun five months ago when the newly elected United Conservative Party government repealed the carbon tax and eliminated the funding source for the incentives.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing says the underlying principle of improving accessibility will be maintained, and connects the revisions to the government's commitment to cut red tape that is slowing down the production of new housing.

Ontario draws on the legacy of more than a dozen years of programming, while Energy Efficiency Alberta has had little time to capture public or capital planners' attention.

With the largest share of relatively inexpensive lighting upgrades completed, finding additional energy savings gets more complicated and costly. However, significant paybacks are projected from the increase in upfront program costs.

The current formula for allocating global adjustment costs is generally thought to be locked in for at least another year. Changes in the conservation and demand management regime are unfolding more rapidly.