It looks like the government will be implementing a plan to prioritize energy efficiency in new building, both commercial and residential. In September ’17 they released a guide called the ‘BC Energy Step Code: A Best Practices Guile for Local Governments’. In it they encourage local government to implement steps to enhance energy efficiency through policies, development permits and ultimately Official Community Plans and bylaws.

This is a new policy and will likely make buildings of any type more expensive. The recommendation is that implementation can take place over the next few years – 2018-2020, on a voluntary basis. On the other hand they leave it open for local governments to enforce compliance.

Energy efficiency is a fine thing, we just need to make sure that we don’t take the brunt of this initiative. We need to stay in touch with the CSRD and making them aware that we are perfectly happy if they implement this somewhere else and we’ll work on energy efficiency ourselves.

Here’s a summary of the provinces plan. Energy Step Code