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restaurant windows. "Every restaurant should have a green pass," he says. Syed also wants regional LEED scorecards take local energy costs into account. "Eastern Canada pays higher natural gas rates than Alberta," he explains, "while electricity rates in Alberta are three to four times higher than natural gas. If you pay so little for natural gas, what incentive do building owners have to improve insulation, to reduce natural gas consumption?" Buildings with good bones can qualify for LEED EBOM (Existing Building Operations and Maintenance), though even here Steeves notes that the envelopes of older buildings, particularly those made of brick and stone, can't always accommodate envelope improvements. Meanwhile, LEED accreditation demands the extra burden of proper accounting. Regardless, Blackman figures that LEED will no longer be a premium service in the near future. "Green building design will be standard practice in five to 10 years," he says. This may help explain why Pavlovich has seen certain builders do 'LEED shadowing,' where clients follow LEED principles without getting the certification.Bolus isn't a fan of the practice, calling it, "pretend LEED. If you don't measure what it is that you did, how do you know that you've achieved it?" he asks. Legislators can add carrots to the mix. Feed-in tariff programs, for instance, have spurred many landowners to install renewable energy equipment on their properties. Owners sell the energy generated back to the grid at a premium over the going rate. The premium makes sense as a measure to help defer investment in extra generating capacity. But Legislation and public policy 18/ FIT gives some utilities fits as they strive to strike a balance between returns for owners and reasonable energy prices. Steeves figures the right premium is between 15 and 30 per cent. "Otherwise, it's a misallocation of resources," he says. "I don't see the benefits outweighing the costs," says Pavlovich, arguing that energy-efficient designs deliver greater cost savings. Syed sees a greater green building push from governments south of the border. "They more frequently update their codes," he says. Certain Canadian developers voluntarily use U.S. standards, such as ASHRAE 90.1 and 189.1. "The adoption of ASHRAE standards in Canada is a big step," says Adams, "but it won't be pushed unless it's legislated. Otherwise, we'll get more greenwash." While federal incentives lag, Syed notes that provinces like New Brunswick also fund energy efficiency improvements. Pavlovich notes that B.C.'s Power Smart program rewards companies for 'smart engineering practices,' effectively paying clients to use less energy today to help defer expensive infrastructure upgrades. Municipalities are jumping in as well. Pavlovich notes that ASHRAE "has been adopted by the Vancouver Building Code." Opresnik points to Toronto's Green Building standard, largely lifted from LEED "augmented with bicycles and trees and things the city felt were specific to Toronto's needs," he says. Energy performance disclosure To green existing buildings, Erin Hoffer points to advanced approaches in certain cities, like disclosing the energy usage of their properties "which is essentially like getting a grade," says Autodesk's senior december 2012 Houle Electric.indd 1 p12-19GreenBuilding.indd 18 industry programs manager, adding that these measures help owners more wisely invest their renovation dollars. As an example, in New York City, the Greener Greater Buildings Plan obliges owners of properties larger than 50,000 square feet to establish benchmarks for their energy and water consumption. "New York makes this information publicly available," Hoffer says. For all known advances in materials and technology, buildings don't necessarily stay green once they're substantially complete. Much hinges on how their owners run them and their residents use them. Owners benefit from 'low-hanging fruit' behaviour like lowering set points and installing LEDs, producing results without extra capital costs. Syed notes that resident behaviour can make buildings run greener. "About 10 years ago, I read that Japan's parliament mandated that men remove suit jackets in summer so they could reduce air conditioning usage." "With existing buildings, achieving gains in 'sustainability' measurements is usually more of a forensics exercise," says HH Angus' Paul Keenan. "It's very seldom that we strike gold with a single improvement. Usually, we make a lot of incremental improvements across many systems, and it's not until we add them up at the end of the day that we see the degree of improvement we've achieved in the measurements. "If you understand the fundamentals of engineering design and apply them in the appropriate way, you succeed in delivering the values the client is trying to espouse and the results are very rewarding." ■ Operations and maintenance Green building design 12-10-11 10:54 AM 11/16/12 3:18 PM