Energy benchmarking analysis of multi-unit residential buildings (MURBs) in Toronto, Canada

Abstract

Abstract The City of Toronto has committed to achieve 30% GHG emission reduction by 2020 and 80% by 2050. The buildings are the third highest GHG emitter in Toronto (25% of overall GHG emissions), it is crucial to investigate the current level of GHG emissions resulting from the buildings and try to deploy GHG emission reduction strategies in order to achieve the target reductions of 2020 and 2050. Energy benchmarking and developing meaningful performance indicators can help government and building owners/managers to make effective decisions on improving their buildings' efficiency and carbon footprint. For this study, information on 120 multi-unit residential buildings (MURBs) has been benchmarked and analyzed. The study entails the following steps: performing energy benchmarking using statistical analysis, developing meaningful performance indicators, determining performance ranking, and examine different levels of percentile savings (energy and GHG emissions). The study concluded that the most appropriate indicators are energy consumption per square meter (kWh/m2), energy consumption per number of occupants (kWh/capita), energy consumption per number of units (kWh/units), and energy consumption per number of floors (kWh/floor). The range of energy performance indicator for the chosen MURBs varies 141–580 kWh/year-m2. Although reducing the overall natural gas consumption (improving heating system and domestic hot water system) may not lead into much of cost savings (due to the system upgrade), but it can have significant positive environmental impacts (reducing GHG emissions).