Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.
On behalf of my colleague, I would like to thank you for inviting us here today. We are pleased to appear before you to discuss the role of Public Works and Government Services Canada in enhanced energy efficiency and potential cost reductions for federally owned or operated building structures in Public Works.
I am John McBain, assistant deputy minister responsible for the real property branch of the Department of Public Works and Government Services Canada. With me is Caroline Weber, assistant deputy minister, corporate services and strategic policy branch.
We welcome the opportunity to speak with you on the subject of the two major areas of responsibility of PWGSC that pertain to your area of study, namely, the functions of our real property branch and our Office of Greening Government Operations.
PWGSC plays an important role in the daily operations of the Government of Canada. As one of 29 major custodians for real property owners in the federal context, we are the principal owner of office accommodation. We also manage a diverse real estate portfolio, including 1,475 leases and 20 major engineering assets.
While PWGSC's 335 crown-owned buildings represent less than 1% of the 39,670 federal buildings that currently show on Treasury Board's inventory, the floor space managed by Public Works represents 31% of the federal inventory. Our crown-owned inventory itself totals approximately 4 million square metres of building space throughout Canada. The magnitude of these holdings, which house some 269,000 public servants in 1,819 locations across Canada under our accountability, puts us in a position to demonstrate leadership for effective and efficient use of federal real property.
In addition to the real property function, the department created the Office of Greening Government Operations to serve as a focal point for efforts directed at managing federal operations in a more sustainable manner and to work with other government departments to accelerate the greening of government operations as a whole.
PWGSC's practices conform to Treasury Board's policy on the management of real property and the federal sustainable development strategy. This ensures that real property is managed in an environmentally responsible manner while providing best value to the taxpayer.
We have been actively engaged in reducing the energy consumption of assets through a number of means.
These include adopting leadership in environmental and energy design, or LEED, and Green Globe targets for new building and major renovations, and adopting the Building Owners and Managers Association's Go Green Plus or BOMA BESt practices for improving how we manage and operate our existing buildings in a sustainable way.
Third, we employ the federal buildings initiative, an innovative approach to involving private sector investment to reduce the consumption of energy and water in our buildings. Fourth, we have developed and implemented Workplace 2.0, an initiative to modernize the workplace environment, including shrinking the space allocation for offices and providing a greener office environment. Fifth, we established targets for our portfolio's performance on reductions of greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption.
Last, but certainly not least, we undertake special initiatives, such as our low-carbon memorandum of understanding with our colleagues at NRCan, and pathfinder projects aimed at making our buildings more intelligent.
In specific terms, I can elaborate on these points as follows. We require that any new office building, crown-owned or long-term leased, be built to respond to and achieve the Canada Green Building Council's LEED gold certification. For all buildings under major renovations, a LEED silver certification is a requirement. PWGSC currently owns six buildings that have obtained a LEED gold or silver certification, and we have 14 buildings under construction or under certification consideration that are targeted to achieve LEED certification.
As an example, the Jean Canfield Building, located in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, received official LEED gold certification in 2011. It was the first Government of Canada building to achieve this certification in Atlantic Canada. It was built with a number of design features to reduce energy consumption, including heat recovery from exhaust air, as well as daylight harvesting and, at the time, Canada's largest photovoltaic solar panel array on the roof of the building to provide electricity directly to the building. Additionally, the building has no heating or cooling plant itself. We chose to connect to Charlottetown's district energy system.
Regarding BOMA Go Green Plus, which is a sustainability assessment for standard buildings and operations and maintenance, 259 of our crown-owned buildings have been assessed. Of these 259 buildings, 66%, or 170, have been certified by BOMA Canada as green buildings in terms of how they're operated.
We have implemented 40 projects under the federal buildings initiative developed and administered by the NRCan Office of Energy Efficiency, all of which have led to a direct reduction in water and energy consumption.
On April 2, 2012, PWGSC launched the Government of Canada Workplace 2.0 fit-up standards. The standards provide direction to create effective and productive work environments for employees, accommodating individual work styles, alternative work strategies, and sustainable design principles, while also reducing the amount of space allocated for offices by two square metres per person.
Workplace 2.0 will encourage green, smart buildings, environmental controls, and more natural light along with a smaller footprint that will not only help save energy but also produce more efficient buildings. It will be applied to all new federal accommodation projects.
As standard practice, all buildings over 1,000 square metres are energy-audited on a five-year cycle. These audit reports identify opportunities for energy conservation that feed directly into our annual building management planning, or BMP, cycle. Our BMP cycle is the heart of our annual process that builds on inspections and condition ratings. It is the core of how we manage our portfolio, and special initiatives, such as the FBI project, are programmed and planned throughout this cycle.
From a policy perspective, Treasury Board's policy on the management of real property requires each deputy head to be responsible for ensuring that the real property within their accountability is managed in an environmentally responsible manner consistent with the principle of sustainable development. The policy requires that we meet a number of objectives, which, as a department, we translate into specific standards, policies, and best practices.
PWGSC also works with policy leads in specific areas, such as the recently signed memorandum of understanding between PWGSC and NRCan to collaborate on and partner in a program to lower the carbon footprint in the PWGSC buildings that NRCan occupies. Together, we believe the two departments can aspire to a leadership position for this and all other custodians.
In the context of the federal sustainable development strategy, PWGSC is committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 17% by the year 2020 from our 2005 consumption. Over the five years from 2005 to 2010, PWGSC has achieved a reduction of about 5%, equating to an estimated cumulative savings of $17 million. Between 2001 and 2010, PWGSC achieved a 19% reduction in energy consumption at our crown-owned and lease-purchase assets.
There are numerous other initiatives within our department that will help us reduce our energy consumption in buildings. Notwithstanding, we continue to identify opportunities for improvement, and in many instances we are collaboratively engaging our colleagues with other federal departments on the common objective of energy sustainability. More can and will be done in the years to come.
Again, we thank the committee for the opportunity to attend here today. We will be pleased to respond to your questions.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.