Michael Lewis
Special to Ontario Construction News
Toronto has postponed by a year its deadline for annual energy consumption reporting for buildings from 10,000 to 50,000 square feet as property owners and managers deal with obstacles in accessing data from the range of utility providers.
City council last week approved an amendment to its Municipal Code that pushes the first annual consumption reporting deadline to July 2, 2026, while also extending the deadline to request reporting extensions or exemptions to the same date.
Owners of buildings larger than 50,000 square feet received an extension last year but are now required to submit reports detailing monthly water, natural gas and hydro consumption using data from Toronto Hydro, Enbridge Gas, Enwave District Energy, and Toronto Water.
The reporting mandates follow council’s decision in 2023 to set thresholds for allowable greenhouse gas emissions on Toronto’s approximately 40,000 commercial, multi-residential, institutional, and industrial buildings, with a proposed bylaw to be presented to council this fall. Emission targets and penalties for non-compliance will initially apply to larger commercial sectors, followed by single-family homes.
The city has set up working groups and stakeholder advisory committees drawn from sectors subject to the standards to consider technical and other implications of the building emissions performance standards.
James Nowlan, executive director of Toronto’s Environment, Climate and Forestry division, said in a report to council that the new reporting deadline will allow the division to establish a reporting help centre for owners and utilities.
“While progress is being made, automated solutions to providing aggregated whole-building utility data for buildings smaller than 4,645 square meters (~50,000 square feet) but as large or larger than 929 square meters (~10,000 square feet) are not yet in place,” the report says.
“The amendments provide additional time for utilities to prepare to support the reporting process for this additional volume of buildings.”
During a webinar on Toronto’s emissions standards Environment, Climate and Forestry division senior project manager Ana Maria Medina said the city is working on automating water data aggregation to reduce the time it takes to provide whole-building water consumption data to building owners.
“We aim to eventually enable direct uploading of water consumption data into ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager,” she said, adding that Toronto Hydro is making progress on enabling automatic upload of monthly aggregated electricity consumption data into customers’ ENERGY STAR accounts.
Bryan Purcell, vice president, policy and programs with The Atmospheric Fund, said on the online seminar that obtaining aggregated data from utilities is a “pain point” for many of the landlords and public sector facility managers that must report energy and water use.
He said automation at the utilities’ end would be especially helpful in reducing administrative burden, along with the potential for data entry mistakes.
In a separate motion, city council has agreed to delay conveyance of parkland so construction can begin this year on rental housing and a new public road at 25 Fisherville Road in North York.
The Municipal Code had provided for parkland conveyance at the first above-grade building permit for redevelopment of the site but the timing would require the new road to be open to the public, even though construction may not be complete prior to conveyance of the public park into city ownership, says a motion by Ward 6 — York Centre Coun. James Pasternak. “Further, the lands to be conveyed as parkland may be required for construction of the new rental housing on the site,” the adopted motion says.
“To facilitate construction of the new public road and expedite the development of much-needed new rental housing, the motion authorizes the parkland to be conveyed within thirty-six months following issuance of the first above-grade building permit for the development. This approach will enable the new road to be available to the public and allow efficient construction.”
