Toronto, ON — Eight buildings within the Toronto region will be receiving extensive retrofits as part of the city’s Deep Retrofit Challenge (DRC).
The competition-style program will receive up to $5 million in funding from Natural Resources Canada.
The participating buildings are as followed:
- 350 Bay St. (Dream Office REIT)
- 723 Bloor St. W. (Dream Unlimited)
- 88 College St. (governing council of the University of Toronto)
- 1-15 Field Sparroway and 2-10 Tree Sparroway (Toronto Community Housing)
- 633 Northcliffe Blvd. (Northcliffe Inc.)
- 177 St. George St. (Dream Unlimited)
- 145 Woodward Ave.
- 61 Yorkville Ave. (Minto Apartment Limited Partnership)
Each project will receive a grant of $200 per sq. metre of gross floor area, up to a maximum of $500,000, or 25 per cent of the total project cost, whichever is less. The grants will offset the incremental design and construction costs required to achieve maximum greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions.
“Reducing emissions from buildings across Toronto is a critical piece of the City’s TransformTO Net Zero Strategy and something we must do quickly to address the climate crisis,” explains Jennifer McKelvie, deputy mayor of Toronto. “Through the deep retrofit challenge, we are accelerating emission reductions and creating pathways for other buildings to follow. Reducing emissions to net zero will require significant community-wide action and investments by other levels of government.”
The City of Toronto states that the DRC participants are currently finalizing their designs. The process includes an integrated design workshop, energy modelling, and the final selection of energy conservation measures. Additionally, participants must reach a minimum 50 per cent reduction in the building’s GHG emissions, a minimum 50 per cent reduction in total energy use intensity, and manage a payback period of 20 years or less.
Launched in 2022, the DRC aims to accelerate emission reductions from buildings in Toronto and identify pathways to net zero that can be replicated in other buildings across the city.
Retrofits will be completed by early 2025. Once complete, the city will develop and publicly release case studies on the completion of the retrofits, including the retrofit designs, utility savings, project costs and lessons learned.