Waterfront Toronto Releases Minimum Green Building Standards

April 28, 2011, Toronto, ON - Waterfront Toronto has released updated Minimum Green Building Requirements that build on the organization’s original Mandatory Green Building requirements developed in 2006.

The new Minimum Green Building Requirements update existing requirements and incorporate additional categories to reflect changes in the marketplace and to address local and regional priorities.  The revisions also reflect the growing market acceptance of green building strategies which allows Waterfront Toronto to set even higher standards for waterfront communities.

They were renamed “Minimum” to encourage design and development teams to innovate and go beyond the thresholds set within the requirements.

A strategic tool for achieving sustainable development goals, the requirements guide Waterfront Toronto’s developer partners and increase the potential for the design and development of high performance buildings.

Among the changes are new requirements for water conservation and an increase in the energy efficiency requirement for buildings, from better than code to 50 percent efficiency. Also, three percent of a building’s total energy use will now need to be supplied by on-site renewable energy.

The new minimum requirements will ensure that waterfront buildings will be able to support electric vehicles. All parking in new buildings, both residential and commercial, must be built with the electric vehicle infrastructure roughed in. Plus two percent of the parking spaces in residential buildings must be fully built with charging stations for electric vehicles.

The new requirements will apply to all future development projects.

Developers of existing projects must follow the earlier Mandatory Green Building Requirements and can elect to incorporate the new requirements as part of their design as voluntary innovations.