Joe D’Abramo jumps out of his chair in a boardroom on the 22nd floor of Metro Hall and points to the new 43-storey RBC Centre going up at Wellington and Simcoe. “See that? It’s a see-through building, all glass,” he says, pointing to the sunshine streaming through the high-rise’s floor-to-ceiling windows. Though shiny towers make for impressive skylines, all that glass is awful at retaining heat or cold. “But that building is going to be 26, 28 per cent more energy-efficient than the National Energy Code,” says D’Abramo, acting director of zoning bylaw and environmental planning for the city. The building will achieve that, in part, by using a deep-lake-water cooling system, which saves more in energy consumption than the windows lose in efficiency.

For developer Cadillac Fairview, building a greener RBC Centre means savings in long-term operating costs and the marketable prestige that comes with an eco-conscious building. By September 2009, though, that prestige might just evaporate. Next month, city council will vote on changes to Toronto’s Green Standard and, if they approve them, even the laziest of Toronto developers will be required to beat the National Energy Code by at least 25 per cent. Though its goals are long-term and hard to see — better air quality and water conservation, reduced emissions and improved waste management — Torontonians will notice tangible changes to the urban landscape. New workplaces will be required to provide showers and change rooms for cyclists. Car parking lots will be restricted to the bare minimum. Your hip condo tower boasts a green roof? So what? They’ll be mandatory for all new mid-sized and large buildings, if council approves the accompanying Green Roofs bylaw.

In addition to the usual building codes and zoning requirements, developers could face a long checklist of environmental requirements. In the city’s effort to green itself up, the tempest over shopping-bag taxes and coffee-cup bans seems straightforward compared to the task of producing environmentally sustainable buildings. It’s not as simple as removing the plastic lid from a Tim Hortons cup.

“It’s inevitable that cities will ask developers to take green issues more seriously,” says Mark Gorgolewski, an architecture prof at Ryerson University. “But standards are trying to encode things that are difficult to encode.”

The Netherlands entrenched energy reduction requirements in its national building code in 1998. In 2001, Tokyo mandated green roofs on large buildings. San Francisco’s green building laws, considered the toughest in North America, came into effect this month for large new and renovated building projects. Toronto’s new Green Standard, which has been voluntary for private projects for the last two years, adopts a carrot-and-stick strategy, says D’Abramo. The stick takes into account the limited power of Ontario cities to regulate developers, using letters of credit, site plans and contracts rather than laws to push developers to meet minimum requirements — a method that seems destined to bolster the Ontario Municipal Board’s booming business in appeal hearings. The requirements are expected to add about 2 to 7 per cent to a project’s capital budget, costs that are expected to pay for themselves in energy savings in less than seven years, according to a city report.

The carrot is a refund of between 20 and 40 per cent of development charges for builders who meet a higher green standard (for example, 40 per cent more energy efficiency than the national code, rather than just 25 per cent), which might add more than 7 per cent to the cost of building. Those fees can be in the millions of dollars for large projects. Council will also vote on an Eco-roof Initiative Program, which would give up to $100,000 to owners of existing buildings installing green or cool roofs in the next year.

“On one hand, we’re punishing retailers when it comes to plastic bags and coffee cups and on the other we’re giving grants to developers. We’re not being consistent,” says Karen Stintz, councillor for Ward 16 Eglinton-Lawrence. She was on the planning and growth management committee that sent the proposals to council, but she’s waiting until city staff crunch numbers on the cost of the incentives before she decides how she’ll vote.

For top-end developers, the Green Standard is a big yawn. Since 2004, Canadian builders have registered about 1,000 projects for LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), a system developed in the US that awards points for green building initiatives, allowing developers to claim ratings ranging from basic certification to platinum. (The RBC Centre is registered for LEED Gold.) They get so many points for features like proximity to public transportation, using local materials, installing two-flush toilets and lots of points for treating waste water onsite. It’s voluntary and prestigious. Cleaner, healthier cities are a side effect.

“If you are LEED-certified, you can sell at a better price or faster,” says Thomas Mueller, president of the Canada Green Building Council, which administers LEED in this country.

LEED has flaws: it’s expensive and requires a massive amount of paperwork. There’s also the temptation for developers to chase cheap and easy points that mean little to the project’s overall environmental footprint. Some developers make LEED claims in their marketing material, then don’t bother to follow through, a practice Mueller calls “greenwashing.” Still, it’s taken off as the industry benchmark. The San Francisco standards, for example, are based on LEED — get your certification and you pass. (Developers there can also use the lesser-known Build It Green standards, which are administered by a not-for-profit group.) Toronto’s Green Standard borrows some elements from LEED, though it doesn’t let developers pick and choose. For the top of the industry, the rules will be just another hoop to jump through — though it’s nice to get rebates for things you were going to do anyway.

“We’re doing all our projects LEED because we want to take our buildings to a higher level,” says Greg Nevison, senior vice-president of construction for Tridel, a developer that decided six years ago to make green buildings its market niche. “If you’re doing LEED, you’re usually meeting the city standard.”

Mueller concedes that if green-building practices are mandatory, it might take some of the shine off LEED, but figures the standards will have more of an effect on the bottom end of the market. LEED is aimed at the top 20 per cent of developments and updates every two years to keep that competitive advantage.

“LEED isn’t for everyone. We’re not delusional that way,” says Mueller.

Since the Green Standard isn’t going after the keeners, enforcement is especially important. Counting trees or the square footage of a green roof is simple enough, but it’s unclear how the city will ensure a building will be as energy-efficient as its developer claims it will be — even LEED has a hard time doing that. In the program’s rollout, about 200 staff are slated to take a half-day or day course on green development practices.

“It worries me about staff understanding the requirements and, if it’s in addition to their current duties, whether it will be adding a burden and cause delays for permits,” says Gorgolewski.
Though it might take several years and a lot of OMB hearings before the wrinkles are ironed out, D’Abramo says the Green Standard is about raising the bar and changing attitudes.

“The more buildings that are energy efficient, the more it drives the lowest of the low. If you want to get the existing buildings up to speed, you build much better new ones,” says D’Abramo.