Lesson 4: Provide simple, clear, and accessible materials
Interviewees agreed clear, consistent, and accurate information, including ‘explainer’ diagrams, played a critical role in the BC Energy Step Code’s adoption by designers, builders, and local governments.
Lesson 5: Encourage collective ownership
The provincial government relied on the built environment stakeholders that co-developed the BC Energy Step Code both for in-kind contributions of building science expertise and funding for studies. This collective investment in the process imbued shared ownership of the outcome.
Lesson 6: Offer an easy on-ramp to performance codes
By design, the BC Energy Step Code allows local governments to adopt higher energy-efficiency requirements at a pace that works for them. Experienced communities skipped straight to Step 3. However, most, after careful consultation with the industry, have adopted Step 1 as a starting point, to increase builder familiarity with new expectations, before transitioning to higher steps within six to 18 months.
Step 1 is actually a misnomer, because it is the ‘ground floor’ of the high-performance staircase. Local governments using Step 1 are not actually requiring project teams to deliver a level of energy efficiency exceeding the BCBC. It just asks them to prove to a building official, via energy modelling and onsite airtightness testing, they are meeting existing minimum requirements.
With Step 1, project teams work with an energy advisor, many for the first time, to identify cost-effective opportunities to improve the energy performance of their designs Builders would engage advisors at the project’s earliest stages. They will also learn how a blower-door test, paired with a thermographic camera, identifies otherwise invisible opportunities to tighten up the air barrier. Since it is a capacity-building step allowing building professionals to get their feet wet in high-performance practices, one industry interviewee pronounced Step 1 “one of the master strokes of implementation.”
Lesson 7: Identify and tackle cost ‘pain points’
In 2017, BC Housing published a detailed analysis of the costs of higher-performing buildings undertaken in Canada. It found, in most situations, project teams could deliver on the requirements of Step 3 for about two per cent more than what they would pay to comply with existing code requirements on energy.
This premium is in line with the costs of previous code updates, stakeholders confirmed.
“Just as with seismic standards, fire prevention and egress measures, and public health requirements, energy performance is not cost-neutral,” one interviewee said. “Rather, it is an investment for societal good.”
Knowing that construction costs would nonetheless be contentious, the council identified the specific cost pain points, and worked to mitigate them as much as possible. For example, the province’s natural gas utility, revamped its incentive program to align directly with the steps of the BC Energy Step Code.
During consultations, designers and builders identified the learning-curve cost (the time needed to learn new practices and techniques) as one of the larger costs associated with higher-performance construction. While interviews with ‘real-world’ studies were showing they could meet the requirements of the lower steps with readily available materials such as continuous insulation (ci) and good windows, learning the strategies takes time, and time is money.
BC Housing developed courses on the practices and approaches to higher-performance construction, and began delivering workshops to designers and builders around the province.
The Energy Step Code Council also targeted other costs. For example, building teams must hire an energy advisor to help optimize project designs and demonstrate compliance with the code’s metrics. Their fees can add $800 to $1200 to project costs. However, a growing number of local governments now offer rebate programs, co-funded by utility incentive programs, to offset or eliminate upfront expense for their first BC Energy Step Code project.
Lesson 8: Consider elections and seasonal factors in the roll-out plan
With the establishment of a long-term target and best-practices guide in the hands of local governments, some members of the Energy Step Code Council worked to map out key phases of engagement and outreach work, and consider key milestones, constraints, and opportunities.
