Vancouver City Council today approved a policy that requires all new building rezonings to be Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold standard, the highest green building standard for rezonings in North America.
The change takes effect January 31, 2011 and is expected to result in 20 to 30 new green buildings being constructed annually, creating new green job opportunities in the city.
“Setting a new standard like LEED Gold for new building rezonings is a significant step for Vancouver,” said Mayor Gregor Robertson. “This is another example of the innovative leadership our city’s development and tech sectors are taking to accelerate our job growth and take advantage of global economic opportunities.
“This policy took a lot of work to develop and demonstrates a new collaboration between the City of Vancouver and industry groups such as the Urban Development Institute and Canada Green Building Council. We have extensive green building expertise and talent in our city — it’s one of the fastest growing sectors in Vancouver — and we want to help it expand.
“By bringing in a LEED Gold standard, we’ll reduce our GHGs, create new job opportunities for our local green building sector, and continue to take a leadership role on urban planning in North America.”
LEED is a third-party certification program and an internationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction and operation of high-performance green buildings. The LEED program is administered by the Canada Green Building Council.
“This bold move by the City of Vancouver recognizes LEED as a market driven transformational tool and it demonstrates the City’s commitment to build a better future,” said Thomas Mueller, the President and CEO of the Canada Green Building Council. “This policy supports our goal of achieving 100,000 LEED buildings in Canada.”
Buildings in Vancouver account for 54 percent of all GHGs on an annual basis. Currently, the City requires all rezonings to meet LEED Silver or Built Green Gold.
“We applaud the City of Vancouver’s initiative to make Vancouver the greenest city in the world,” said Maureen Enser, executive director of the Urban Development Institute, which represents over 500 companies in the development industry and related professions.
“The Green Rezoning Policy is an important step toward that goal. We thank Council for the work the City has done to identify solutions to areas of concern for the industry. We believe the policy passed today strikes the right balance.”
This policy supports the Greenest City Action Team and Greenest City 2020 goals of leading the world in green building design and construction, as well as creating 20,000 green jobs in Vancouver by 2020.
Photo credit: City of Vancouver