The climate emergency has been declared.

The World Green Building Council has stated that all new buildings are to be net zero operational carbon with a 40% reduction in embodied carbon by 2030. But, what can we do NOW to get there?

We know that the decisions we make today will impact on the carbon footprint of the buildings we design for their lifetime and we know that high performance buildings will play a significant role in the transformation to a low carbon economy.

In Toronto, buildings account for about 60% of all carbon emissions and of the 323 cranes in the air, the vast majority are for residential projects - far more than any other North American city. Unfortunately, residential buildings have been the slowest to make the move toward low carbon design principles, so we wanted to see what could be done to change that.

As key stakeholders in the development of residential buildings in Toronto, we want to understand why change is so slow, how we can come together to do something about it and ultimately aim to design buildings that are both affordable and sustainable.