Upcoming Event: Get to Know Building Benchmark BC!

Join us on May 5th for a webinar led by OPEN Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Dave Ramslie to learn more about Building Benchmark BC, Canada’s biggest and most successful voluntary energy and carbon disclosure program. 

Building Benchmark BC is a collaboration of OPEN and the real-estate industry, 16 regional and municipal governments across BC, BC Hydro, the Province of BC and the Federal Government of Canada. Participation is free, and buildings entered into the program will receive support in setting up ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager, benchmark insights on their energy and carbon performance, plus insights and strategies on how to reduce their operational emissions. Be sure to check out the Year 2 Performance Report, as well as the Disclosure Map, to dig into the data for yourself!

Project Updates

It’s been a busy first quarter of 2022 for the OPEN Technologies team, here’s a bit about what we’ve been working on!
 

Affordable Housing Navigator

As you may recall, OPEN Technologies was awarded funding through the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s Housing Supply Challenge in December to bring the Affordable Housing Navigator to life. Building upon OPEN’s experience with design optimization modeling for new buildings - along with our proven track record in creating innovative, interactive webtools for decision-makers - this tool will allow non-profit housing providers and developers to quickly find the right balance between construction costs, energy performance, and climate resilience.

We are pleased to share that our team has been hard at work and the development of the webtool is underway! Keep an eye on this space in the coming months for more updates as we continue to make progress. 

If you represent a non-profit housing organization in Canada, we would love your input on how to make this product meet your needs.  Please reach out at info@opentech.eco.  

GRID

The Canada Green Building Council has licensed GRID since 2018 for their Disclosure Challenge, a voluntary, Canada-wide benchmarking and disclosure program that supports and champions the importance of data transparency in the Canadian real estate market. The challenge aims to encourage a broader uptake in benchmarking programs across the country. Most recently, the Disclosure Map has been updated to now include data from the 2020 reporting cycle, in addition to 2018 and 2019! 

We are also thrilled to be continuing our relationship with the City of Calgary, as they have renewed their GRID subscription to include a second and third year! The City’s voluntary Commercial Building Energy Benchmarking Program has been in place since 2019, and the data for the first two reporting cycles are available on the city’s Energy Performance Map. 

Accelerating Home Retrofits

Throughout 2021 and the start of 2022, OPEN has been actively involved in market research on the opportunities and challenges of decarbonizing homes in BC. This work has been an ongoing collaboration between OPEN, Vancity Credit Union, The Sound, and Circular Citizen. In May, we will be releasing a public-facing document summarizing the key findings of and calls to action from this research. Watch this space for more details to come! 

Our team continues to grow! 

OPEN Technologies has a new senior developer! This month, we are thrilled to welcome Paul Lucas to our team.

Paul is a senior software developer who values abstraction, correctness, and simplicity. In past roles, they have utilized functional programming to optimize distributed data-processing systems, as well as apply semantic enhancements to programming languages. They are passionate about the realization of a low-carbon future.

Interested in joining our team? We are hiring! Check out our Careers Page for more. 

New and Notable

A few news stories, reports, opportunities, and other resources that recently caught our eye:

• The District of Saanich is piloting an interest-free loan program to help homeowners make the switch to electric heat pumps! See the full article for more. 

• Our friends at ZebX are hiring an Embodied Emissions Program Manager!

• B2E has published an excellent case study, detailing the path to full home decarbonization. 

• The 2020 National Energy Code for Buildings and the National Building Code have (finally) been released, and will serve as a model to help drive performance based codes across the country. Efficiency Canada’s latest blog outlines the details.  

• The City of Victoria has become the first municipality in BC to approve an expedited process for certain development projects. Read the full CBC article for more information.