Buildings as a climate solution

In Vancouver, nearly 60% of our carbon pollution comes from buildings. This is mainly from burning natural gas (which is methane, a fossil fuel), for heating our homes and our hot water.

In B.C., we have very clean, renewable hydro-electricity, which means that natural gas is 16 times more emissions-intensive than our electricity.

Image Source: Metro Vancouver Building Roadmap 2050

To do our part to fight climate change, we need to reduce emissions from buildings by 50% by 2030. That means ambitious and necessary actions to shift away from the use of fossil fuels in favour of equipment that uses clean and renewable energy.

For new buildings, it is more straightforward to design and construct them to produce nearly zero carbon emissions. That’s why we’ve focused our efforts to date on ambitious requirements for new buildings:

• Implemented regular updates to our building code to require highly efficient new homes
  • Energy requirements and resources for homes | City of Vancouver
  • Zero Emissions Buildings | City of Vancouver
• All new City-owned and managed buildings are now being built to the Passive House standard or equivalent and use zero-emissions fuel sources.
• Providing heat pump training for contractors, and developing a more streamlined permit process for heat pumps Heat pumps | City of Vancouver

Now, we’re turning our attention to making changes so that existing buildings, including commercial buildings and detached houses, are zero emissions by 2050.

Detached homes

A typical detached (single family) home in Vancouver emits about 6.3 tonnes CO2 every year. That's about the same as a typical car in B.C.

Conversely, a home using only electricity produces only 0.2 tonnes CO2. That means switching homes to use electricity, especially for space and hot water heating, is so important.

In the City of Vancouver, we have nearly 79,000 detached homes. Collectively, these homes represent about 497,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions per year! That's the equivalent of about 76,000 cars driving for one year.