TORONTO — Jana Elbrecht, senior policy advisor at Clean Energy Canada, made the following statement in response to Ontario’s Bill 17.
“The adoption of the Protect Ontario by Building Faster and Smarter Act (Bill 17) risks making housing more expensive in the long run by stripping essential municipal powers to set standards for green buildings, including EV readiness requirements. While we need more affordable housing for Ontarians, we also need to ensure that we build housing that will be affordable to live in as well as build.
“Driving an electric vehicle and charging it at home can save Ontario households thousands of dollars per year. But installing charging infrastructure in housing that is already built is three to four times more expensive than installing it in new homes from the start. Several municipalities have put in place EV readiness requirements for new buildings to ensure their residents have the option to charge their vehicles at home, where it is cheapest and most convenient. Removing these municipal standards without substituting a province-wide requirement will only make life more expensive.
“In the absence of municipal authority to require new buildings to be EV-ready, updating the Ontario building code to add standardized EV charging requirements for new builds across the province must be a priority. Ensuring all Ontarians can fuel their vehicles at home with clean, made-in-Ontario electricity will reduce monthly household bills while also enhancing our province’s energy security and supporting our burgeoning EV industry.
“Despite the bill’s shortcomings, we were pleased to see it take some small steps in the right direction when it comes to using cleaner construction materials in Ontario’s housing build-out. Building smarter should also mean reducing the carbon embodied in buildings. Cleaner construction materials and more efficient designs can already be used without increasing the cost of construction, as shown in a recent Clean Energy Canada report. Bill 17 removes duplicative approval processes for allowing new, innovative construction materials that are already under examination by the federal government. This will enable lower-carbon materials to enter the market sooner.”
KEY FACTS
- To date, some 14 municipalities in Ontario, including Toronto and Hamilton, have adopted policies requiring new buildings to meet higher environmental performance benchmarks such as EV readiness and embodied carbon requirements.
- Eight municipalities in Ontario have EV-ready bylaws, requiring a share of parking spots in new buildings to have wired electrical outlets and sufficient electrical capacity to install Level 2 EV charging in the future.
- The Toronto Green Standards set an embodied carbon limit for new municipal buildings, and the City of Hamilton’s Green Development Standards require new buildings to report on embodied carbon.
- Quebec, which recently introduced EV readiness language into its building code, is the province with the highest EV uptake, followed by B.C., where over 30 municipalities have EV readiness bylaws in place.
- Research has shown that equipping a new parking space with an EV charger is three to four times cheaper than upgrading an existing one.
- Building with lower-carbon materials and designs does not need to cost more, as shown in a recent Clean Energy Canada research report.
RESOURCES
Report | Electrifying the Lot
Report | Building Toward Low Cost and Carbon
