The Disclosure Challenge brings together Canada’s real estate owners to publicly share building data in an effort to reach sustainability goals (Courtesy, CaGBC).

The Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC)’s Disclosure Challenge champions the importance of data transparency in the Canadian real estate market and encourages the adoption of benchmarking and transparency actions across the country.

The most recent participants include Brookfield Properties, Kingsett Capital, SHAPE Properties, and Golden Properties. These companies have joined the founding participants, , Triovest Realty Advisors Inc., Concert Properties Ltd., Colliers International and the Minto Group, to publicly share their portfolio-wide energy, water and carbon data.

The Disclosure Challenge brings together some of Canada’s largest real estate owners to publicly demonstrate the power and potential of sharing building data. Participants in the Challenge found that when this data is collected and shared internally, it can become a powerful tool to support significant emissions reductions, energy efficiency improvements, and cost savings. When data is shared externally, it supports overall market advancement toward sustainability goals

Building data helps inform future investments

The addition of new participants brings the total amount of floor space publicly shared in the CaGBC Disclosure Challenge data visualization tool to 14.3 million m², a 30 per cent increase from the launch year. By making their data public, participants provide valuable insight that reveals buildings’ performances in relationship to others in the market, helping inform decisions on future investments.

Participants are responsible for:

• submitting a list of buildings;
• collecting and submitting portfolio-wide data for those buildings;
• identifying outlying buildings and submitting additional contextualizing information;
• working with the Challenge administrators to fill data gaps leading up to the disclosure of information.

By demonstrating the value of data transparency, the Disclosure Challenge sets an industry-driven example for municipal and provincial jurisdictions interested in developing requirements for building performance data reporting. To date, only Ontario requires public reporting of building energy data, but that might soon change.

The City of Montreal recently announced a municipal benchmarking program and Nova Scotia, the City of Vancouver and the City of Winnipeg have been actively working on benchmarking programs or plans as well.

To learn more about benchmarking, visit cagbc.org/disclosurechallenge.