Thank you, Sheila.
Optimizing the performance of Canada's existing buildings is key to meeting Canada's energy and climate commitments. Investments in these buildings can also generate solid economic benefits for those who own, operate, live and work in these buildings. The Pembina Institute has found that every $1 million invested in energy efficiency results in $3 million to $4 million in economic growth. That's real return on investment.
Here's how ASHRAE can help.
ASHRAE recently revised standard 100, “Energy Efficiency in Existing Buildings", which sets criteria through reducing energy consumption to improve energy efficiency and performance.
ASHRAE has also recently published standard 211, an energy audit standard, which should be helpful to municipalities that have started to include energy audit requirements in conjunction with their benchmarking regulations.
Another tool ASHRAE has developed to improve the energy performance of existing buildings is ASHRAE's building EQ. Building EQ is a building energy rating program that provides both an operational and an asset rating to assess a building's energy performance. Beyond providing a score, building EQ can help you improve your building's energy performance once you have done the benchmarking. We are using building EQ at Carleton University to improve our energy performance, improve the indoor environment and save money. This has resulted in energy savings of about 20%.
We must also focus on building operations. As buildings have become increasingly complex, we need to ensure that designs respond to effective building operations and that the operator is effectively trained to get real value from energy-efficient design, without compromising the indoor environment.
So-called smart buildings are another area where ASHRAE has developed tools to optimize building performance. ASHRAE's standard 135 defines data communication service protocols for information technology used to monitor building systems and to ensure that all building automation systems can talk to one another. Ensuring that these data protocols are in place will help buildings actually realize the energy savings as designed.
I'm now going to hand the microphone back to Sheila, who will speak on how buildings' integration with the electric grid can help deliver even greater energy efficiency benefits and cost savings.