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Canada Standard
27-06-2025
- Politics
- Canada Standard
Green Building Standards Unaffected by Controversial Provincial Legislation, Toronto Says
After Ontario's Bill 17 was fast tracked to royal assent, Toronto city staff say the new legislation won't affect the city's standards for green buildings. The Protect Ontario by Building Faster and Smarter Act was rushed through to approval June 3 without the typical public hearings and standing committee review. It drew opposition for provisions that some organizations said would strip municipalities of their power to enforce green building standards-rules requiring developers to design buildings in ways that conserve water and energy and cut greenhouse gas emissions, for example. Cities like Toronto have relied on the Municipal Act and the City of Toronto Act to support standards like its Toronto Green Standard (TGS). But that authority was based on a "grey area" of the provincial Building Code Act that was "generally interpreted to mean that if a building code requirement actively conflicts with a municipal bylaw, then the building code requirement takes precedence," Bryan Purcell, vice-president of policy and programs at The Atmospheric Fund (TAF), told The Energy Mix in May. Organizations like TAF warned that Bill 17 risked undermining that authority by clarifying the grey area. With the new legislation, the Building Code Act now states that "certain sections of the Municipal Act, 2001 and the City of Toronto Act, 2006 do not authorize a municipality to pass by-laws respecting the construction or demolition of buildings." View our latest digests Alexandra Sanita, a spokesperson for Ontario's municipal affairs and housing minister Rob Flack, said in a statement to The Narwhal that the legislation "standardizes construction requirements and provides consistency, clarifying that no municipality has the authority to enforce a by-law that supersedes the Ontario Building Code." "Through these changes, the City of Toronto's Tier 1 of the Green Building Standard would not be allowed as they mandate requirements for new development planning applications that go beyond the Ontario building code." Tier 1 is a list of mandatory green building requirements. Other tiers, which set incentives but are not mandatory, would still be allowed. But Toronto city staff later released an assessment of the Act's impacts. They determined that "there is no impact to the City's ability to continue to apply the TGS to new development." When asked how the Act's impacts on other legislation, like the Municipal Act , might affect the TGS, the City told The Energy Mix it "cannot provide further comment on the topic at this time" because of legal action against the TGS filed last year. Comments submitted to the legislature by the Canadian Environmental Law Association (CELA) state that the new amendment does not change the legislative powers of the province to set construction standards, and that municipalities can pass by-laws in pursuit of economic, social, and environmental, including for climate change. "Municipal action in pursuit of those listed goals, as long as they do not require specific construction standards, will not conflict or overlap with provincial authority," says CELA. However, CELA criticizes other parts of the Act that limit cities' access to information about new buildings. Source: The Energy Mix
Canada News.Net
27-06-2025
- Politics
- Canada News.Net
Green Building Standards Unaffected by Controversial Provincial Legislation, Toronto Says
After Ontario's Bill 17 was fast tracked to royal assent, Toronto city staff say the new legislation won't affect the city's standards for green buildings. The Protect Ontario by Building Faster and Smarter Act was rushed through to approval June 3 without the typical public hearings and standing committee review. It drew opposition for provisions that some organizations said would strip municipalities of their power to enforce green building standards-rules requiring developers to design buildings in ways that conserve water and energy and cut greenhouse gas emissions, for example. Cities like Toronto have relied on the Municipal Act and the City of Toronto Act to support standards like its Toronto Green Standard (TGS). But that authority was based on a "grey area" of the provincial Building Code Act that was "generally interpreted to mean that if a building code requirement actively conflicts with a municipal bylaw, then the building code requirement takes precedence," Bryan Purcell, vice-president of policy and programs at The Atmospheric Fund (TAF), told The Energy Mix in May. Organizations like TAF warned that Bill 17 risked undermining that authority by clarifying the grey area. With the new legislation, the Building Code Act now states that "certain sections of the Municipal Act, 2001 and the City of Toronto Act, 2006 do not authorize a municipality to pass by-laws respecting the construction or demolition of buildings." View our latest digests Alexandra Sanita, a spokesperson for Ontario's municipal affairs and housing minister Rob Flack, said in a statement to The Narwhal that the legislation "standardizes construction requirements and provides consistency, clarifying that no municipality has the authority to enforce a by-law that supersedes the Ontario Building Code." "Through these changes, the City of Toronto's Tier 1 of the Green Building Standard would not be allowed as they mandate requirements for new development planning applications that go beyond the Ontario building code." Tier 1 is a list of mandatory green building requirements. Other tiers, which set incentives but are not mandatory, would still be allowed. But Toronto city staff later released an assessment of the Act's impacts. They determined that "there is no impact to the City's ability to continue to apply the TGS to new development." When asked how the Act's impacts on other legislation, like the Municipal Act, might affect the TGS, the City told The Energy Mix it "cannot provide further comment on the topic at this time" because of legal action against the TGS filed last year. Comments submitted to the legislature by the Canadian Environmental Law Association (CELA) state that the new amendment does not change the legislative powers of the province to set construction standards, and that municipalities can pass by-laws in pursuit of economic, social, and environmental, including for climate change. "Municipal action in pursuit of those listed goals, as long as they do not require specific construction standards, will not conflict or overlap with provincial authority," says CELA. However, CELA criticizes other parts of the Act that limit cities' access to information about new buildings.
Canada News.Net
24-06-2025
- Politics
- Canada News.Net
EXCLUSIVE: 'World Will Be Watching' Carney's Fast-Tracked Megaprojects as Carbon Budget Shrinks
With a wave of new "nationally significant" projects on the way after the Carney government's Building Canada Act (Bill C-5) becomes law, the world will be watching how Canada meets its climate responsibilities, said the UK's former chief scientific advisor Sir David King. "Every country in the world is now wondering how to handle the new president in the United States. Every country feels under threat," King told The Energy Mix in an exclusive interview Friday. But "climate change is the biggest challenge humanity has ever had to face up to, and because it's a global problem, every country needs to handle the problem," he said. "It's not something we can just put aside for a period. This is an issue that is right up front, something we cannot abandon, and I do think Mark Carney is somebody who understand that." So "we over in the rest of the world are going to be watching how Canada handles that problem," added King, who said he knew Carney well during the prime minister's term as governor of the Bank of England. King was commenting after more than 60 of the world's top climate scientists warned that humanity is on track to exceed the available carbon budget to limit average global warming to 1.5C, in a paper published in the journal Earth System Science Data. By the beginning of this year, that budget "had shrunk to 130 billion tonnes," the British Broadcasting Corporation reports, "largely due to continued record emissions of carbon dioxide and other planet-warming greenhouse gases like methane, but also improvements in the scientific estimates." If countries keep up their current pace of about 40 billion tonnes of emissions per year, "130 billion tonnes gives the world roughly three years until that carbon budget is exhausted," BBC adds. The remaining carbon budget for a 1.6 or 1.7 threshold could be exceeded within nine years, says. "Things are all moving in the wrong direction," warned lead author Piers Forster, director of the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures at the University of Leeds. "We're seeing some unprecedented changes and we're also seeing the heating of the Earth and sea-level rise accelerating as well." Those shifts "have been predicted for some time," he added, "and we can directly place them back to the very high level of emissions." "Under any course of action, there is a very high chance we will reach and even exceed 1.5C and even higher," added study co-author Joeri Rogelj, a professor of climate science and policy at Imperial College London. "We are currently already in crunch time for higher levels of warming." The news prompted an urgent call to action from King, now chair of the 18-member Climate Crisis Advisory Group. The findings "make one thing clear-there is effectively no carbon budget remaining for either CO2 or methane emissions if humanity is to achieve a safe and manageable future," he said in an email release. "Policy-makers must adopt a comprehensive strategy focused on deep and rapid emissions reduction and removal, whilst also developing resilience against increasing extreme weather events." With this year's UN climate summit, COP30, just a few months away in Belem, Brazil, "governments, financiers, and businesses must put this in focus," King added. "We do not have time to delay any further." Carney must approach the dual challenges of climate change and Trump's aggression "with clarity, to demonstrate that Canada means business," King told The Mix. "There is a real culture in Canada that is distinct from the culture of the United States," he said. So "protect your culture. Do what you can. But don't do it at any cost." Climate change has been accelerating over the last five years, along with the loss and damage from an uptick in extreme weather events, and "the result of the election in the United States producing Trump as the president means the onus is now on all other countries to make much better commitments." The United Kingdom has already reduced its emissions by 54% from 1990 levels, and has set a target of 81% by 2035. King said the Canadian prime minister "understands very clearly that in the UK, we have reduced our carbon dioxide footprint from 12 tonnes per person in 1995 to something like six tonnes, whereas you guys in Canada are well over 20 tonnes per person." So "Canada has an enormous amount of work to do to demonstrate that it understands why we're all suffering from these extreme weather events, and why the future of humanity is now severely at stake." The European Union has set its sights on a 90% emissions reduction by 2040. And King rejected concerns that that target will be undercut by reliance on questionable carbon credits, or by member states that don't deliver on their promises-largely because renewable energy is now the cheapest form of electricity in any part of the world. "That's the big driver for change," he said. But "we're seeing a terrible future unless we get action now from all progressive countries," and while "I have always admired Canada as a major progressive country, I can't say that on climate change," with its reliance on oil sands production that he cited as "probably the worst way of getting oil out of the ground." But judging by Carney's record with the Bank of England, where he took "a very strong line" against banks investing in fossil fuel projects destined to become stranded assets, "he understands the risks of climate change. He doesn't need a lecture on this issue. So you are very fortunate to have Mark Carney in any economy that is now based on oil, gas, or coal, there has to be a shift away from that, and Carney is frankly the right person to lead it." King said he saw no need to connect trade and climate policy. But Carney has been musing about replacing carbon pricing with a carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) with other "like-minded" countries, and the Liberal Party platform in the recent federal election said a Carney government would "promote fair competition with our trading partners" through a CBAM.
Canada Standard
24-06-2025
- Business
- Canada Standard
2/3 of Canadians Give Clean Energy Higher Priority, 3/4 Want Climate Policy Linked to EU's
With Prime Minister Mark Carney pledging to develop all forms of energy, both clean and conventional, two-thirds of Canadians want the federal government to prioritize clean, and three-quarters want Canadian climate policy aligned with Europe rather than the United States, according to new public opinion data released this week by Clean Energy Canada. The research by Abacus Data found that, assuming both were priorities, 67% of Canadians "would generally favour clean energy projects such as critical minerals, renewable power and transmission, and energy storage," Clean Energy Canada explains. "The remaining 33% would prefer conventional fossil fuel projects like oil and gas, including [liquefied natural gas] development." View our latest digests Among the 2,585 Canadians who took place in an online panel between June 2 and 5, 87% said clean energy will be "very" or "pretty" important, and 83% said the same of fossil fuels. Some 45% said clean energy would be "very" important, compared to 36% for fossil fuels. The research uncovered overwhelming support-a margin of 76 to 24%-for shifting Canadian climate policy to align more with Europe, rather than the United States. And "as Canadians face another summer of wildfires, support for continued climate action remains extremely strong, with only 14% of Canadians saying the federal government should do less to combat climate change and transition the country to clean energy," Clean Energy Canada writes. But while a large plurality of respondents, 44%, wanted Canada to do more on climate, 41% said governments are doing about the right amount. The European Union is currently far ahead of Canada in its efforts to drive down climate pollution and shift to renewable energy technologies, and analysts have pointed out that Canada would be by far the biggest per capita emitter in any new trade relationship with the EU. The Abacus research also found that Canadians support building new homes with lower-carbon, sustainable materials by a margin of 64 to 15%, while 70% definitely or likely want to see EV hookups and heat pumps in new homes as long as the cost is minimal. "It's easy to wonder whether views on important issues have shifted as Trump, tariffs, and national security dominate headlines and the worried minds of Canadians," Clean Energy Canada Director of Communications Trevor Melanson said in an online statement. "And yet the consensus on climate action and the transition to clean energy remains overwhelmingly positive. What's more, as Canada forges stronger trade relationships with the likes of Europe and Asia, we may see a growing economic and values alignment with jurisdictions that are all-in on clean energy." Source: The Energy Mix
Canada Standard
10-06-2025
- Business
- Canada Standard
Ottawa Battery Project Down But Not Out After Failed Committee Vote
A proposed 250-megawatt battery storage project in Ottawa's rural west is down but not out, after the city's Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee (ARAC) voted unanimously last week to reject the plan. The Energy Mix has learned that supporters of the Marchurst Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) expect a closer margin when the full city council meets June 11-with the possibility that at least two ARAC members will change their votes. The 10-hour meeting last Thursday heard 68 public delegations before denying official backing for the project, CBC reports. Gatineau, Quebec-based Evolugen, a subsidiary of Brookfield Asset Management, already has a contract from Ontario's Independent Electricity System Operator to build the project on a 4.5-hectare site, about 30 kilometres west of downtown Ottawa. But it's conditional on a municipal support resolution (MSR) from the city. "The technology is a key part of the Ford government's plan to solve a looming energy supply crunch, as demand in the province is expected to increase by 75% by 2050," CBC writes. "But for many residents, the location of this particular battery trumped any broader provincial picture." Still, while the ARAC vote "was unanimous at face value," some committee members were "very conflicted", a committee observer told The Mix , with one councillor comparing the introduction of battery storage to the arrival of the motor car in a horse and buggy community. View our latest digests "I believe that BESS is a good technology, and this, on its merits, may actually be a good project," said Councillor Matthew Luloff (Orleans East-Cumberland), according to a segment of an unofficial meeting transcript viewed by The Energy Mix . While Luloff said his committee vote followed the wishes of councillor Clarke Kelly (West Carleton-March), who vehemently opposes the project in his ward, "I reserve the right to make my own decision at Council, where this matter will come forward again for further discussion." Luloff added: "I will be taking the lessons I learned here today at that vote. Let this also be a lesson on consultation, it is not a box to be checked but a fundamental part of decision-making. Community education is incredibly important, and we must continue to do better... in how we inform." Angela Keller-Herzog, executive director of Community Action for Environmental Sustainability (CAFES), said the community adjacent to the Marchurst site "needs to come together" in order to negotiate with Evolugen for local benefits from the project. But at the moment, "avowed opponents... distrust information offered up by the project proponent company," she wrote in an email. "The anti-BESS group is talking about 'raising pitchforks' and the local Facebook group ejects anyone who has positive things to say about the project." [Disclosure: CAFES is a partner of the Green Resilience Project, a joint community listening effort hosted by Energy Mix Productions and the Basic Income Canada Network.] The Energy Mix could not verify the content of the private West Carleton BESS Facebook group. Courtney Argue, a leading project opponent who lives about 400 metres from the site, said "it really depends" how visitors are treated when they join the group. "People get deleted if they are being disruptive or we have a suspicion that they have ties to Evolugen or their potential or confirmed partners," she told The Mix in an email. "You try your best. Sometimes you get it right and sometimes you get it wrong." As for the comment about pitchforks, "we hold our pitchforks in our hearts when it comes to protecting our land, wildlife, and way of life," Argue wrote. "Rural folk are not violent folk. We handle things together. We show up in the masses at town halls, we help neighbours. In this fight, we cannot leave any stone unturned." While the group is meeting neighbours who support sustainable energy solutions-Argue said she'd "love to add solar to our farm to help sustain our operations"-she maintained that most of the people she's heard from oppose the BESS project. Keller-Herzog said the local community newspaper, West Carleton Online, which has covered the issue extensively over the last two years, recently estimated that "the community was pretty evenly split but that the anti-BESS voices consistently tried to present a picture as everybody against." In spite of the furor and the "significant coverage" it has received, "there is probably a majority of busy working families that are not tuned in to the local news and have no engagement on the issue," she said. "The real problem? Our community lacks a calm and credible space to talk things through," Keller-Herzog wrote in a mid-May opinion piece for West Carleton Online. "Many thoughtful West Carleton residents, who might offer balance or ask good questions, have simply gone silent, understandably reluctant to wade into a conversation that has become conflictive and dominated by a few loud voices." Evolugen, meanwhile, "now appears hesitant to engage further, perhaps understandably, given how strident the misinformation has become," she said. Evolugen's Canadian head of development, Geoff Wright, had not responded to a request for comment as The Mix went to virtual press Monday evening. But "there are other BESS conversations that affirm of course residents and businesses in Ottawa want the lights to stay on, want the grid to be stable, want power to be affordable, want the jobs, investment, taxes paid and local community benefits from a safe, non-polluting energy infrastructure solution," Keller-Herzog added. Source: The Energy Mix
