The Government of Canada is taking action to fight climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving energy efficiency. The buildings sector is the third-largest source of emissions in Canada, which is why Canada's upcoming Green Buildings Strategy will be critical to achieving Canada's climate targets, creating more climate-resilient buildings and supporting jobs in many sectors across the country. An effective strategy includes the development of strong building codes across Canada.
Today, the Honourable Jonathan Wilkinson, Canada's Minister of Natural Resources, announced a call for proposals for the Codes Acceleration Fund. The fund will support provinces, territories, municipalities, Indigenous governments and stakeholders in adopting and enforcing the codes needed to fight climate change and improve resiliency from coast to coast to coast.
To decarbonize the buildings sector, Canada is proactively working with partners to adopt national model building and energy codes. The Codes Acceleration Fund will support actions that will help to urgently accelerate the adoption of and compliance with the higher-performance tiers set out in the 2020 edition of the National Building Code, National Energy Code of Canada for Buildings or other high-performance codes, including net-zero emissions codes.
The Codes Acceleration Fund has three objectives:
● to accelerate the adoption and implementation of the highest feasible energy-performance tiers of the national model energy codes or other high-performance building codes, such as net-zero emissions codes;
● to promote higher rates of compliance with adopted codes; and
● to build capacity and support market preparedness for ambitious code adoption.
A total of $100 million is available and will cover two streams:
● Stream 1: Support for jurisdictions that have the authority to adopt energy codes.
○ For provinces, territories, municipalities and Indigenous governments and communities with the authority to adopt energy codes, this funding will support them in accelerating code adoption and addressing gaps in code compliance and enforcement.
● Stream 2: Support for organizations that do not have the authority to adopt energy codes, but play an important role in accelerating their adoption.
○ This funding will support these organizations to develop capacity-building projects that contribute to code adoption, compliance, and/or enforcement. This group includes for-profit and not-for-profit organizations and jurisdictions that do not have the authority to adopt codes.
