Okay. Thank you.
We, Passive House Canada, are a national, not-for-profit, membership-based organization with a mission to transform buildings across the country. We view our role, at this point, as largely supporting the implementation of the federal-provincial agreement that's been reached for the national strategy.
Our members are the market leaders. They are the building professionals, the architects, the engineers, the contractors, the developers, and the manufacturers who are today delivering projects that meet the level of efficiency that's being targeted in the 2030 model national building code. That's who we are. We are the ones who are doing it today. I actually think it's quite appropriate that we follow BOMA, because we see our role as delivering better buildings to their members—buildings that will be simpler and more affordable to operate. That's really where we fit in.
Perhaps two years ago in Canada, Passive House had hardly been heard of, and in a lot of circles that's still the case. The good news is that in the pipeline—there aren't that many built or finished yet—there are millions of square feet that are currently going through the permitting and development process, or are under construction. They are in all climate zones, other than the high Arctic. We don't yet have one in Resolute, but they're certainly in cold climate conditions all over. They're virtually all building types. We have institutional buildings—large rec centres, fire halls, and social housing—and they're spread across the country.
The name is Passive House. That's rather an unfortunate translation from another language. It means “building”, not “house”. It is something that is about all forms of buildings, and that's what we are now developing with our members. There are a number of high-rise projects in Vancouver that are currently going through permitting. Right now, in the city of Vancouver, 20% of their rezoning applications, which is most of the development in the city, are for Passive House projects. That's what's coming in through the pipeline. We're seeing that roll out in Toronto in a big way with larger-scale projects and developments there, and it won't be long before this standard of building starts to hit the market in force. That, I think, is a really good thing, for a variety of reasons.
I'll just take a few minutes to frame the issue, starting with some work we did with UN agencies in developing the UN framework guidelines for buildings. In that work, the UN, of course, has its sustainable development goals. Sustainable development goals, for them, include not just energy efficiency but also improving the quality of life in buildings. The quality of life includes things such as affordability, comfort, air quality, and simplicity in operation. That whole basket of goods is required for them to achieve their sustainable development goals.
We support that approach to buildings because, although there is the climate change imperative that is driving codes and standards, we also need consumer demand. The demand for better buildings that offer better comfort, better air, and are simple to operate is a crucial market factor in our minds. It's essential to keep both of those forces in mind. Better buildings are really a question of building physics, and inertia is a very powerful force in physics as well as in politics. To overcome the inertia, we need to marshal all available forces to drive the market transformation that is needed. That's why we urge that we not overlook the quality of life offered within buildings.
The question is, how do we do that? Again, if we look to the EU, they funded a research project back in the 1980s, asking how efficient buildings should be. Is there a sweet spot? They hired academics, largely physicists, to go around the world and study buildings to see if there was some sort of economic sweet spot. Typically, as you go up in efficiency, costs go up. You need to figure out what the point of diminishing returns actually is in practice, not according to some theoretical calculation.
What they noticed, simply by plotting the numbers of projects from around the world, was that the costs go up and up, but there is a spot at which, all of a sudden, costs drop. They inquired as to what the cause of that could be. It is that at that level of efficiency, the envelope is good enough that the envelope itself does most of the work. It is of high enough quality and it can be trusted by the mechanical engineers and so on, so they can properly size their equipment. The systems become much simpler. It's driven by simple physics—the heat-carrying capacity of air—and you can therefore keep a very comfortable environment, with all the exterior surfaces being warm and so on, without a high-power mechanical system.
That's one component of the affordability. The other component is that the mere fact of having to achieve that level of efficiency requires a simplification in design, because efficiency is first and foremost a question of design, to set the building up for success. It requires some innovation—some different ways of laying out floor plates and that type of thing—but that's what it is. We had those two factors driving this economic sweet spot, and the study then concluded that this was where it ought to be, because at that lower level of energy consumption, it's possible to meet the remaining demand through renewable sources—perhaps not on a per-building basis, but at the community level.
That was the level of efficiency that the study developed. That efficiency and those metrics are what formed the foundation of the Passive House building standard. It is a standard that was developed to answer that question. It was developed within the regulatory context, and I would suggest that it's the reason we see those metrics and that standard referenced as widely as we do around the world in the development of building standards. When we look at the metrics evolving within Build Smart, they actually mirror the Passive House metrics, and I would suggest it's for that reason.
At that level of efficiency, we also get the quality of life, so the two are related—they go hand in hand. That's really the magic of driving efficiency far enough: we get something that is affordable, that is demanded by consumers once they're aware of it, and it solves the climate change issue in terms of buildings.
That is the type of solution that's being looked at in a variety of circumstances, not just in Canada but around the world.
How does that relate to our national building strategy or net-zero-ready buildings? Those are, as I said, the metrics that are being incorporated. The functional definition of a net-zero-ready building within some building code is aligned with the Passive House standard, and we're seeing it roll out all over.
The key for market transformation, we would say, is to feed and follow the leaders, and they will figure it out. This isn't easy work. It is demanding and it requires innovation, but the industry leaders like doing it. They will figure it out, and they enable others to follow.
We're working very closely with the City of Vancouver in developing their centre of excellence. We believe that type of model is an excellent model. We're happy to provide more information on it, and we provide a national curriculum of education to train engineers and builders on how to do this.
Those sorts of mechanisms are really the key to success, whether we're talking new buildings or retrofits; they're really very similar.
I see the colour red is up, so I'll wrap up my comments there.
