Improving building energy performance offers important benefits for local communities, including reduced greenhouse gas emissions, long-term cost savings for residents, and better air quality and health. Recognizing these advantages, many local governments are looking to supplement provincial and territorial building energy requirements. However, Canada’s varied regulatory landscape creates challenges, often leaving municipalities uncertain about their jurisdictional authority to implement new initiatives. The aim of this jurisdictional scan report is to contribute to a clearer understanding of jurisdictional realities across Canada and to demonstrate how local governments are advancing local building energy performance.

The jurisdictional scan report, titled Building for Sustainable Communities: A Canada-wide review of local governments advancing high performance buildings, includes a review of:

• The diverse provincial and territorial adoption approaches of national model codes;
• The extent of local legislative authority across Canada to adopt higher code tiers or supplement code requirements; and,
• Various types of local government-led initiatives.

Through this review, the report shows that many local governments are eager to take action towards high performance buildings and are ready to implement those ambitions when empowered to do so.