Canadian Green Building to Increase by Half

by | Jun 23, 2014

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Green buildingCanadian companies expect their green practices will grow from one third to one half by 2017, according to a report prepared by McGraw Hill Construction.

The report, titled Canada Green Building Trends: Benefits Driving the New and Retrofit Market, was commissioned by the Canada Green Building Council and shows that companies investing in green buildings are realizing a significant return on their investments.

Of the findings, 82 percent of building owners and developers reported decreases in their green buildings compared to similar buildings, and 68 percent reported decreases in water consumption. In addition, the median reduction in operating costs over five years for green buildings reported by the firms in the research was 17 percent, with a median payback for the initial investment in a new green building reported to be eight years.

The report also said that architects and owners that have worked on green building projects have seen a median building asset value increase of 4 percent.

Social factors are apparently playing a role in Canada’s green building boom as well. Client demand and “doing the right thing” were the top triggers listed for future green building by 42 percent of the report’s respondents, and 60 percent of the respondents who conducted green building projects said they considered the ability of green buildings to promote greater health and well-being among occupants to be the most important social reason for their choice to invest in green.

Canada tops the list of the top 10 countries for LEED outside of the US with 17.74 million gross square meters of LEED space, according to a report published by the US Green Building Council last month, titled LEED in Motion: Residential.

In addition, there are as many as 150,000 LEED-certified green housing units worldwide, a number that more than doubled between 2011 and 2012 and continues to grow, according to the USGBC report.

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