The City of Toronto is now consulting on its Building Emissions Performance Standard (BEPS) which will be presented to city council in Fall 2025. One of the most important questions in designing a BEPS is which types and sizes of buildings should be included. Generally we want the policy to cover as many buildings as possible in order to maximize emissions impact. However, there are administrative and legal challenges to including certain building types, which has led most jurisdictions to exempt a significant share of the building stock.
What buildings are included in other jurisdictions? *
- City of Vancouver – Office and retail buildings >100,000 ft2
- New York City – Commercial, institutional and multi-family buildings >25,000 ft2
- City of Boston – Commercial, institutional, industrial and multi-family buildings >20,000 ft2 + residential >15 units
- Washington DC – Commercial, institutional and multi-family buildings >25,000 ft2
- Seattle – Commercial, institutional and multi-family buildings >20,000 ft2
* See case studies in our policy primer for more details on timelines and metrics.
Why aren’t single family homes included?
Notably, every North American jurisdiction with a BEPS has exempted single-family homes. Although single family homes are a large share of building emissions, there are a range of practical challenges to applying BEPS in this sector. First and foremost is access to data. BEPS requires buildings to benchmark energy use – typically using energystar portfolio manager (ESPM) – and submit results to the City, which uses the data to determine if the buildings comply with the standard. Training half a million homeowners on how to use benchmarking software, and following up with tens of thousands who are out of compliance, is beyond the resources of any city.
Although Toronto considered including single family homes in its BEPS, a council motion approved in 2024 sets out that small-scale residential will be exempt. This doesn’t mean that the City is giving up on decarbonizing single-family homes. Staff are exploring enhancements to voluntary programs such as the Home Energy Loan Program. Eventually, alternative regulatory approaches for this sector will be needed. That might take the form of stronger equipment standards limiting what types of heating equipment can be installed when older systems need to be replaced. Or it might be in the form of building code requirements triggered by major renovations (currently being developed for the national model code). Either of those regulatory approaches would be more practical for applying in the single-family home sector.
What is the recommended size threshold for buildings?
To date, all North American BEPS have also excluded small buildings, although specific size thresholds vary. The size threshold for Toronto’s BEPs is still under consultation. TAF recommends aligning with the most ambitious jurisdictions by setting the threshold at 20,000 ft2. Alternatively, Toronto could include buildings over 10,000 ft2, which would align with the City of Toronto’s Energy and Water Reporting bylaw. However, including buildings in the 10K-20K ft2 range dramatically increases the number of buildings for which compliance must be managed, while only modestly increasing the emissions impact.
Who should be exempt from the BEPS?
Other BEPS also have a range of exemptions for specific building types. For example, buildings owned by other levels of government are typically exempted, in order to avoid intergovernmental disputes over jurisdiction. Other common exemptions include heavy industry and manufacturing (due to relatively unique energy profiles) and historic buildings (to avoid conflict with heritage preservation). Affordable housing providers are often provided with special allowances. For example, NYC allows affordable housing an alternative compliance pathway with simple prescriptive measures. However, the downside of relaxing standards for affordable housing is that tenants may miss out on the benefits of deeper retrofits, like protection from extreme heat and improved indoor air quality. These and other questions will continue to be explored in Toronto’s policy development and consultation process.
Whichever buildings are included in Toronto’s policy, it’s important that building owners and operators have access to technical and financial tools and resources to help them through the process and protect tenants’ rights.
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