Climate change and housing affordability are Canada’s two most important policy concerns, and they are headed for conflict.

To make housing more accessible for the present generation and accommodate the next one, we will need to build close to six million additional dwellings by the year 2030. However, if we construct those homes following the conventional methods of the previous four decades, we run the risk of increasing an already third-largest in Canada’s emissions by 20%.

We require a new greenprint that alters how we design, build, remodel, and heat our buildings because how swiftly we solve these converging concerns will define all Canadians. Additionally, we will require leadership from all facets of Canadian society, including all levels of government, real estate investors, energy companies, cement and steel manufacturers, and cleantech innovators.

There has been advancement. Developers who are incorporating sustainable building practices into houses and condominiums as well as perspectives from banks like Royal Bank of Canada who are looking at new financial mechanisms to encourage green building were presented at the Brookfield Sustainability Institute’s recent launch at George Brown College.

Additionally, as governments place a greater emphasis on affordable housing, we are witnessing new opportunities for collaboration to de-risk technology, form alliances, and create incentives to make sustainability the standard in the sector.

then, How do we continue to advance?

How we power our homes is a good place to start. To use a construction word, Canada is now at a pivotal stage. We use a lot of natural gas to heat our houses, but installing heat pumps is now more expensive in Canada than it is in the United States. This summer’s clean electricity laws will radically alter that. However, if we electrify buildings incorrectly, we run the risk of shocking the system with sharp spikes in electricity prices for Canadians who are already having trouble making ends meet.

Every province needs to develop ways to produce and transfer more power at lower costs and with fewer emissions if they want to reduce the cost of the transition for Canadians. Fortunately, Canada is a world leader in the discovery of new electricity production technologies, thus speeding up the commercialization of these technologies will be essential.

The materials used to construct structures, such as cement, steel, and similar materials, can contribute up to 30% of a building’s entire carbon footprint. Additionally, these materials can increase the building’s operation’s emissions by almost two decades.

We have choices because Canada is a global leader in green steel and other environmentally friendly building materials. The downtown waterfront campus of George Brown College is home to a new generation of mass timber projects, led by Limberlost Place, that demonstrates the potential of net-zero structures. Concrete, one of Canada’s most difficult pollution problems, is being transformed into a potent carbon sink by Carbicrete in Montreal. Homes in the Springwater community by Mattamy Homes in Markham, Ontario, are heated and cooled using geo-exchange technology, which decreases emissions by 75%. The community is entirely net zero-ready.

We’ll need more of this aspiration, but putting it into practice currently necessitates exclusions and adjustments, which add time and money to a project.

Ambitious zoning and code modifications may encourage the growth of new neighborhoods with smaller, more affordable starter homes that are located near public transportation. They would provide more environmentally friendly housing options to more Canadians, reviving metropolitan areas rather than encouraging suburban expansion.

Provinces and cities may be better positioned to assist contractors and their suppliers in making use of recycled and new low-emission materials standard practice with the help of changes like these. We can take a cue from Europe, where the EU-wide building reporting tool is bringing techniques and ideas from all over the continent into harmony. Paris has approved a regulation mandating that all new public structures be constructed with at least 50% wood or sustainable materials in anticipation of the 2024 Summer Olympics.

With green procurement guidelines that can assist in addressing the embodied emissions of buildings, the federal government is setting the bar high. That way of thinking could improve the efficacy of initiatives like Buyers for Climate Action, making it simpler for provinces and cities to establish and put into practice green procurement strategies.

We don’t have to limit our creativity to merely new construction. We have a ready-made opportunity to develop the retrofit economy in Canada thanks to the abundance of outdated hospitals, schools, public housing, and office buildings across the nation. Programs like Taking Action on Tower Renewal are examples of how Toronto is demonstrating leadership. Millions of dollars are set aside by the program to construct retrofits that lower emissions and boost affordability while safeguarding tenants from rent rises or evictions.

The task can also be more fully embraced by the country’s big pension funds, which manage significant portfolios of shopping centers, office buildings, and residential buildings. As an illustration, Quadreal, a division of BC Investment Management Corp., is utilizing information from carbon audits rather than energy audits to guide property-level transition strategies for its portfolio. Sharing such information with colleagues and partners in the industry will help to get the sector closer to net zero.

Still, we’ll require more. Tax incentives for energy upgrades have been provided by various federal and provincial governments. However, demand has typically not met forecasts. We all have a bigger role to play as Canadians move towards 2030 and an ambitious national goal of emissions reductions, whether it’s investing in heat pumps, demanding cleaner fuels from our gas suppliers, or inspecting solar panels the same way we inspect marble countertops.

The RBC Climate Action Institute and the Brookfield Sustainability Institute joined forces to map out the costs of inaction and the advantages of taking action in response to these difficulties. According to our study, High Rise, Low Carbon, it will cost Canada tens of billions of dollars annually. With that transformation will come a lot of jobs and economic activity, but we also need new ways to finance the investment and scale the technology that might quicken change. We have established a coalition for climate-smart buildings with EllisDon and Mattamy Homes using these insights to implement concepts that others can borrow and enhance.

Given that so many of the world’s emissions originate from other countries, this may seem like an overwhelming challenge, but it hasn’t prevented Canadians from demonstrating to the rest of the world what sustainable, livable, and beautiful cities may look like. We have given birth to illustrious designers like Frank Ghery, ground-breaking builders like Brookfield Corp., and ambitious municipal endeavors like Montreal’s Habitat 67. In 2010, we also hosted the first green Olympics in Vancouver.