At 47% of Ottawa’s community emissions, buildings make up the largest-emitting sector in our city. This has clear implications for municipal climate action. If Ottawa wants to meet its greenhouse gas reduction target of 80% below 2012 levels by 2050, emissions from buildings must be a major target.
In November 2019, Ecology Ottawa published a report supported by The McLean Foundation exploring the ways in which Ottawa’s buildings could be retrofitted to improve their condition and, ultimately, their impact on climate change.
We must invest in making Ottawa’s buildings vastly more efficient and powered by renewable energy. But improvements cost money. Even in cases where energy efficiency investments yield profit over the medium-term, many homeowners and large institutions like governments, hospitals, universities and schools find it hard to prioritize these investments over competing demands. The challenge lies in creating the right set of incentives in order to engage consumers in investments that can dramatically improve Ottawa’s emission performance.
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