Building Skills for Climate Change: Low-Carbon Buildings Training

Launching fall 2023 – training dates coming soon!

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In June of 2021, the Government of Canada made a commitment to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. To fulfill this net-zero goal, the building sector must prioritize decarbonization and instill a low-carbon culture emphasizing the construction of net-zero and climate-resilient buildings and retrofitting the existing building stock. Across the country, the building sector is the third-largest source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, accounting for 13% of Canada’s total. When considering the emissions from electricity generation for buildings, this figure rises to 18% with additional emissions embedded in building materials and construction supply chains. Increasing average temperatures, higher frequency and intensity of floods and wildfires, and other extreme weather events have reinforced the need to both reduce GHG emissions and shift towards climate-resilient buildings to adapt to the impacts of a changing climate.

Project

Addressing climate change requires collaboration, knowledge sharing, and skill-building. Together with Engineers Canada, CRI is developing a specialized low-carbon buildings training course for engineers and other practitioners in the building workforce. With the objective of increasing knowledge and awareness of low-carbon building concepts, this specialized training course will equip engineering professionals with collaborative decision-making, design, construction and operation skills and knowledge to retrofit and build the low-carbon buildings needed for a climate-safe future.

CRI has brought together a diverse team to build a curriculum that explores specialized themes and subject areas including Indigenous knowledges, equity, diversity and inclusion, knowledge mobilization and capacity-building, and technical and engineering services.

This course is part of the Canada Green Building Council’s (CAGBC) Building Skills for Climate Change: Low-Carbon Training Program funded by the Government of Canada’s Sectoral Workforce Solutions Program, a project aimed at upskilling building professionals, including architects, engineers, contractors, and owners and operators, to accelerate the adoption of low-carbon practices, reduce emissions, and contribute to Canada’s Climate Action Plan and Just Transition. For more information, see the media release.

Outputs

Specialized content covered throughout the course includes:

The urgency of the climate crisis and the unique role and professional obligations that engineers have in the decarbonization discussion;
Frameworks and processes supporting the building of the business case, including asset management principles and application to large and small projects, including template for business case outlines;
Important considerations in planning and design including low-carbon technologies and methods;
Standards and the legislative landscape – international, federal, provincial and municipal;
A systems-thinking approach to the total cost of building ownership; financial analysis and the various inputs; life cycle assessment of new buildings and retrofits;

Energy and carbon modelling approaches and methods to building design, operation and maintenance planning for new builds and retrofit applications; and
Indicators and data management methods to monitor, evaluate and report on building operation performance during the design and commissioning phases, and how to apply learning from realized performance

Curriculum Team

Click here to learn more about the curriculum developers.

Collaborators

Together with Engineers Canada, Polytechnique, and CAGBC, CRI is proud to be collaborating with a diverse team of building, knowledge mobilization, EDI, engineering and education professionals to develop the low-carbon buildings training course.

To learn more about the Low-Carbon Buildings Training course, please contact Jenessa Doherty, Senior Project Manager, jenessa.doherty@climateriskinstitute.ca