Concept and Motivation

Over 400 Canadian municipalities have completed community energy and emissions plans for which they acquire data and conduct or procure modelling. Electric and natural gas utilities procure Conservation Potential Reviews (CPR) and establish Demand Side Management (DSM) programs to achieve energy conservation and efficiency targets in buildings. Nationally, Canadian federal government departments conduct surveys and building energy modelling to inform policy and program development, changes to equipment standards and energy performance requirements in the National Building Code.

Energy usage is derived from different sources and methods including measured energy demand data, modelled building simulation data; various statistical and aggregation techniques are applied inconsistently by different organizations to estimate current and projected end-use and efficiency opportunities. Although data are used by municipal, utility and federal government policies, programs and planning processes at different spatio-temporal resolutions, at a fundamental level, the data is essentially the same. What is required for all of these processes is an understanding of the building stock: the relevant characteristics of various building archetypes and their associated energy usage impacts.

Strategic policy, planning and program efforts of municipalities, utilities and federal policy, program, codes and standards that govern these processes are not, however, harmonized in terms of how to incorporate data, characterize the building stock, and evaluate energy usage efficiency opportunities. The lack of geospatial data coordination in particular results in duplication of effort, lost energy savings and lost opportunities for climate change mitigation and resilience. Access to and use of consistent, authoritative geospatial data on the building stock and its energy performance is a systemic challenge that no one organization can fix alone.

Background