Benchmarking and building performance standards

Benchmarking energy use of buildings is a key first step to understanding and improving energy performance and reducing carbon footprints. Many provincial and municipal governments couple benchmarking and reporting policies with other programs aimed at encouraging building performance, including voluntary campaigns, building energy audits, existing building commissioning (EBCx), and building performance standards (BPS).

Benchmarking refers to measuring a building’s energy use (and in some cases GHG emissions and water use) and comparing it to the energy use of similar buildings, its own historical usage, or a reference performance level.

Building performance standard is a policy that requires building owners to meet performance targets by actively improving their building’s energy performance over time, often with interim targets that drive energy savings and emissions reductions.

Create benchmarking and building performance standards policies

Natural Resources Canada’s (NRCan’s) Toolkit for Implementing Benchmarking and Building Performance Standards in Canada aims to inform and support provincial, territorial, and municipal government decision-makers who are exploring policies to reduce energy use and GHG emissions from existing commercial, institutional, and multi-unit residential buildings in their jurisdictions.

Access NRCan’s Toolkit for Implementing Benchmarking and Building Performance Standards in Canada

This toolkit provides an overview of benchmarking programs and BPS policies and offers key information on:

• Considerations for success and guidance on how government leaders can use benchmarking to enact a BPS policy
• Points to consider when designing a BPS
• The roles and responsibilities that provincial, territorial, and municipal decision-makers have in establishing building policies and opportunities to coordinate across jurisdictions
• The critical role utility providers play in providing aggregated whole-building energy consumption data to enable compliance with benchmarking, transparency, and BPS

Benchmarking and building performance standards in Canada

Several provinces, territories, and municipalities in Canada have already implemented benchmarking or building performance standards in their jurisdictions. The list below provides links to programs in Canada:

Benchmarking and disclosure (regulation or voluntary program)

Government of Ontario - Energy and Water Reporting and Benchmarking (EWRB)

City of Montréal: By-law concerning GHG emission disclosures and ratings of large buildings

City of Calgary: BenchmarkYYC

City of Edmonton: Building Energy Benchmarking Program

City of Ottawa: Energy benchmarking and auditing program

City of Winnipeg: Building Energy Disclosure Project

Efficiency Nova Scotia: Benchmarking Pilot - Efficiency Nova Scotia

Government of New Brunswick: Annual Report - Service New Brunswick Energy Management

Province of Quebec:

• Registre public des données énergétiques des bâtiments institutionnels (French only)
• Défi-Énergie en immobilier : Building Energy Challenge – BOMA

Building Benchmark BC

Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC): CaGBC Disclosure Challenge (2019)

Building performance standards

City of Vancouver: Carbon pollution limits and reporting for existing large commercial and multi-family buildings

Role of utility providers in supporting benchmarking and building performance standards

Canadian utility service providers play a key role in providing accurate building energy consumption data to enable building owners and operators to comply with building energy benchmarking policies, and to meet building performance standard regulations.

Automated energy data exchange through ENERGY STAR® Portfolio Manager® is key to successful, efficient, and accurate reporting of benchmarking and building performance standards.

NRCan’s Guidance for Utilities on Providing Whole-Building Energy Data to Enable Benchmarking in ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager provides important recommendations to assist Canadian utility providers with setting up automatic data exchange through ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager Web Services.

Contact us

For more information, contact buildings-batiments@nrcan-rncan.gc.ca.

Related links

• ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager
• Energy Management Training
• Energy benchmarking training resources
• Request a copy of NRCan's Model National Framework for Building Energy Benchmarking, Labelling, and Disclosure: Guidelines for Commercial and Institutional Buildings

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