Building to Net-Zero Community of Practice
Building to Net-Zero (BNZ) Community of Practice (CoP)
The Canada-wide BNZ CoP supports municipalities across the country as they advance building energy performance in their communities. With ongoing growth in the building sector, ensuring that new buildings are sustainable and energy-efficient presents a key opportunity—not only to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but also to enhance long-term community resilience, lower energy costs, and support healthier communities. This CoP provides a space to consider these opportunities through collaborative knowledge exchange, resource sharing, and peer-to-peer learning.
The BNZ CoP hosts monthly virtual sessions that address key challenges municipalities face, including creating internal buy-in, building community and industry support, fostering equitable engagement, exploring best practices for green development standards, and implementing effective measurement and tracking strategies. CoP sessions are open to all local governments and their partners, offering opportunities to engage with subject matter experts, industry leaders, and fellow professionals. Sessions will feature a mix of formal webinars, interactive workshops, and peer-learning clinics, creating space for both structured learning and collaborative problem-solving.
CoP Recordings
Please note that not all CoP sessions are recorded. When recordings are available, these are added to this web page.
Reducing Emissions From Building Materials
When it comes to transitioning to net-zero, it is crucial to consider every part of building and construction, including the emissions associated with materials. Watch this replay to discover how to factor embodied carbon into building decarbonization.
Working with Contractors to Reach Net-Zero
Recording from Tuesday, December 2, 2025
When it comes to net-zero construction, working with contractors is key to achieving high-performance, affordable, and resilient buildings. In this replay, Tanya Ratzlaff from the Home Performance Stakeholder Council and David MacMillan from the City of Toronto highlight how collaboration, training, and shared tools can help align building practices with emerging energy performance standards.
From Insight to Action: Tools to build climate-ready housing and infrastructure
Recording from Thursday, October 30, 2025
It’s one thing to know about tools and resources available to build resilient net-zero housing and infrastructure—it’s another to understand how to use them to their full potential. In this replay, learn how to use Climate Insight to identify climate hazards, assess risks, determine baseline emissions, and improve resilience while lowering carbon emissions.
The Business Case for High Performance Housing
Recording from Thursday, September 25, 2025
Gain financial insights grounded in local market realities to help your municipality navigate the path to net-zero buildings. In this replay, Urban Equation presents key findings from 13 municipal business cases across Canada, highlighting region-specific conditions and practical, cost-effective design choices that improve building performance and resident comfort.
Building Resilience: Integrating climate risks into housing design
Recording from Thursday, August 28, 2025
Gain practical insights from National Research Council Canada and explore how municipalities can start incorporating climate risks into housing design while supporting energy and sustainability goals.
Building Better Housing: Making Sense of the National Building Code Tiers
Recording from Thursday, July 31, 2025
The National Building Code’s tiered framework for energy efficiency in new buildings offers a valuable tool to ensure the homes we build today are also affordable, sustainable, and future-ready. Learn how the tiers work, how they relate to local priorities, and what benefits they can bring for residents—like lower energy bills, better indoor comfort, and fewer costly retrofits down the line. You will also touch on how to use Climate Insight to find resources—like the National Building Code—to address the unique climate and housing needs of your community.
Building Support Through Engagement: Making energy initiatives more inclusive and accessible
Recording from Thursday, June 26, 2025
This session explored how local governments can build support through engagement that truly reaches people—especially those who are often left out, such as newcomers, renters, low-income households, and rural residents. Learn how the City of Calgary’s Energy Equity initiative, along with other local efforts, is helping the city build trust, strengthen community capacity, and make energy initiatives more inclusive and accessible.
Unlocking Sustainable Development: Incentives for new buildings in small to mid-sized municipalities
Recording from Thursday, May 29, 2025
In this session, we explored how planning tools like density bonusing, fee rebates, and recognition programs are being used to move the needle on green development. Watch a recording of a presentation by Lisa Mak, Climate Solutions Specialist with the Community Energy Association, to discover how small to mid-sized municipalities are implementing green development incentives, what makes these strategies effective in smaller communities, and key planning tools and approaches that can be adapted elsewhere.
The Case for Municipal Action Toward Building Energy Performance
Recording from Thursday, February 20, 2025
This first CoP session explored why municipal leadership in building energy performance is essential. Participants discovered practical strategies to help articulate co-benefits in order to drive local support and implementation and heard from subject matter experts and practitioners from Efficiency Canada, Community Energy Association, and the Town of Bridgwater, who shared their insights and experiences.
About the BNZ Project
BNZ is a four-year training and capacity-building project designed to support municipalities in the adoption of building energy performance frameworks. Through the BNZ project, municipalities, community partners, and industry experts are working collaboratively to identify and overcome municipalities’ unique adoption challenges, outlining a clear pathway towards net-zero building energy.
This community of practice is part of ICLEI Canada’s BNZ project, which is funded by Natural Resource Canada’s Code Acceleration Fund.
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