The city of Montreal has announced plans to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The three-phase program will target large commercial and institutional buildings that still rely on fossil fuels to heat.
The city says the new bylaw will be broken down in three stages. The first step Montreal wants to do is collect information on the green house gas emissions of the buildings.
“So we will build a rating system that will allow us to assign a rating to each building and eventually we will be able to impose energy performance bench marks, that’s really what today’s announcement is about” said Montreal Mayor Valerie Plante.
The initiative is definitely a win for the environment as Montreal will be taking a step forward but for realtors of large company buildings the plan comes at a bad time.
“Well look I think the idea of being able to catalogue different types of ventilation systems and heating systems within especially in older buildings which will obviously be the most affected because newer buildings probably have state of the art ventilation” said Jean-Marc Dube, senior vice-president of Colliers International.
Another worry for owners is the time it will take to gather all of required information per building.
Friday’s announcement was to build awareness. The city says it hopes to implement a greenhouse gas reduction plan starting in 2023.
This is the fourth environmental announcement made by the Plante administration this week.