Canada and the U.S. - Different Paths: Part 2 of 3

If you’re like me, you only celebrate really important birthdays – the landmarks of life’s passage. Well in 2012, Canadians and Americans both have something important to celebrate – the 30^th birthdays of the ‘R-2000 Standard’ and the ‘EEBA Criteria’ – both launched in 1982.  And while we take time to recognize the important contribution of these two landmarks, we might also consider how they point to the separate paths each country chose to follow in identifying high performance buildings.

Canada’s R-2000 Standard is the oldest building performance label in North America, a voluntary standard for energy-efficiency, indoor air quality, durability and environmental responsibility. Almost 13,000 houses have been certified to R-2000 across Canada (plus a few in the U.S.), and the program lies at the core of home builder training initiatives and most other new home label development in my country.

The Energy Efficient Building Association’s (EEBA) Criteria are a blueprint for regional climate specific recommendations compiled by a group of residential building leaders at a meeting at Pine Island, Minnesota, in 1982.  These voluntary Criteria introduced the systems approach to new home building in the U.S. The Criteria are at the core of EEBA’s ‘Houses that Work’ sessions, and its regional Builders’ Guides publications….

I talked to Sam Rashkin a little while ago (just before his wonderful book Retooling the U.S. Housing Industry: How It Got Here, Why It's Broken, How To Fix It came out) and he told me that R-2000, the EEBA Criteria, and advances in building science were the three most important contributing factors to the launch of ENERGY STAR for New Homes – easily the most popular label program in the U.S. and Canada. As it was conceived in 1995, ENERGY STAR for New Homes represented a different approach for those interested in high performance building – one that took note of the limits of R-2000 and EEBA Criteria. For the first time, ENERGY STAR took a step-by-step market-driven approach intended to carry production home builders along the building science path.

Where R-2000 was based on significant field monitoring and observation (the Saskatchewan Conservation House 1977, the 1980 Saskatoon Parade of Energy Efficient Homes, the 1981 Super Energy Efficient Home Program) and a partnership agreement between the Government of Canada and the Canadian Home Builders’ Association that trained thousands, it only resulted in about 500 home labels each year.  EEBA Criteria were voluntary and didn’t incentivize the builder. ENERGY STAR eschewed a strict R-2000 specification, offered branding and market supports, and aimed at labelling thousands. So there was reason to swagger in November 2009, when the EPA announced that ENERGY STAR for New Homes had passed the one million certification mark. It worked.

Something similar also happened in the non-residential building market.  In 1989, the convention of the International Building Performance Simulation Association (IBPSA) was held in Vancouver. The IBPSA meeting introduced to Canadians a concept that British scientists were joining - Building Environmental Performance Assessment Criteria (BEPAC) clubs - that in the UK were popularizing the British Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Methodology (BREEAM).  BREEAM  is the grand-daddy of non-residential building rating systems world-wide and was launched in the UK in early 1990.

North America’s first BEPAC club was formed at the University of British Columbia School of Architecture. In 1993, the same group created the first non-residential building rating system in North America: BEPAC Version 1 for Office Buildings, which resulted in 18 building labels in three provinces. This caught the eye of Canada’s Department of Natural Resources who later in the year introduced “C-2000 a Program for Advanced Commercial Buildings” (name sound familiar?) that required annual energy consumption less than half ASHRAE 90.1-1989 as well as a high interior air quality, building reuse and durability quotient. C-2000 labelled 13 buildings.

In 1996 the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) released a guide called “BREEAM-Canada, Plus 1132, An environmental performance assessment for existing office buildings” published under copyright to BREEAM, in the UK.  A few months later, the authors of BREEAM-Canada presented a proposal to the recently formed United States Green Building Council (USGBC), and even signed a 1998 memorandum of understanding, to develop a BREEAM-USA. However, the USGBC (much like ENERGY STAR) was intent upon a system that was market-driven – not standards based – and later the same year released the LEED® 1.0 pilot program for New Construction. (LEED®’s point distribution and several individual credits are identical to BREEAM-Canada). At the time of writing, the USGBC has certified 22,117 projects. The CSA decided not to pursue a BREEAM-Canada label initiative.

Where does that leave us? Well, you may be surprised, but I suggest not so far apart. The R-2000 Standard, other Canadian labels, and Canada’s EnerGuide Rating System have over time become successful partnerships between industry and government. This may not have resulted in as many labelled new homes in Canada, but it has had an impact on building codes and regulations. R-2000 training became an important technology transfer tool. Knowledge about energy-efficiency gained in the field has made it easier in Canada to introduce energy-efficiency code changes. American readers may be surprised to learn that the energy-efficiency prerequisites in LEED® for Homes represent the minimum code level for most new Canadian homes. This is because some provinces have chosen to lead the way. And as readers of Andrew Burr’s blog, and IMT’s Building Energy Transparency report know – it is local jurisdictions that generally lead the way.

In any case, in Canada and the U.S., the renewed focus of all rating systems is now on actual performance. We have in one sense, gone full-circle, and returned to where we were 30 years ago – measuring outcomes to find what construction details and techniques work best. It’s what will get us where we want to go.

In my next blog, I’ll write about what is happening to high performance building labels now in Canada, and what could happen in the future.