Eliminating carbon emissions in Canada’s residential, commercial, and institutional buildings could place further pressures on already-tight construction labour markets
2024年4月25日 - 7:30PM
Retrofitting Canada’s residential, commercial, and institutional
building stock to incorporate sustainable fuel sources,
technologies, and materials could require as many as 57,000
additional construction workers and generate more than $81 billion
in new construction investments by 2032.
A new report prepared by BuildForce Canada and released today,
Building a Greener Future: Estimating the impact on construction
labour demands from transitioning buildings in Canada away from
fossil fuels, considers the implications of retrofitting existing
buildings to improve their energy efficiency and reduce their
carbon footprints in support of the Government of Canada’s goals to
achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. This is
occurring at a time when construction labour markets have been
operating at, or near, full capacity in many regions of the
country.
The report was developed with input from an industry Steering
Committee consisting of representatives from the Canadian Home
Builders’ Association, ClimateCare, the Heating, Refrigeration and
Air Conditioning Institute of Canada, the Mechanical Contractors
Association of Canada, and Reliance Home Comfort. It models a
scenario in which two types of green-building activities are
performed: converting space and water heating equipment from fossil
fuels to electric power sources, and retrofitting buildings to
improve energy efficiency and minimize heat loss. It finds that as
many as 16,300 new jobs relating to fuel switching could be created
in the residential sector alone, while a further 40,600 may be
created to perform energy-efficiency retrofits. More labour will be
required to accommodate the conversion of, and renovations to,
Canada’s stock of commercial and institutional buildings, although
data to support modeling the impact of these conversions was not
available for this iteration of this report.
Data from Natural Resources Canada show that buildings account
for 13% of total greenhouse gas emissions in the country. More than
three-quarters of those emissions come from the fuel sources used
to power space and water heating equipment. Retrofitting these
buildings to improve their energy efficiency and reduce their
carbon footprint has therefore become an important component of
Canada’s strategy to mitigate climate change.
“Addressing this transition will be a huge undertaking for
Canada’s construction and building retrofit sector, but it will
create a significant number of new employment opportunities among
several trades, most notably heating, refrigeration and air
conditioning mechanics,” says Martin Luymes, Vice President,
Government and Stakeholder Relations at the Heating, Refrigeration
and Air Conditioning Institute of Canada.
“The challenge for the construction sector is that this
transition is being considered at a time when non-residential
construction demands are already reporting peak or near-peak levels
in many provinces, and when the residential construction sector is
confronted with the additional challenge of building millions of
new housing units to address Canada’s housing crisis,” says Tania
Johnston, Chief Executive Officer of the Mechanical Contractors
Association of Canada.
Building a Greener Future also models the implications of the
green-building transition across the provinces. It finds that the
impacts of fuel-switching could be comparatively lower in Quebec
and the Atlantic provinces, where a large proportion of homes are
already equipped with electric-powered heating equipment. However,
many homes in the Atlantic provinces may require extensive
retrofits to bolster energy efficiency.
In Ontario and the Prairie provinces, a high percentage of homes
rely on space and water heaters that are powered by fossil fuels
such as natural gas, heating oil, coal, and propane. Demand for
skilled workers to perform fuel switching will therefore be high in
many of these provinces. This is in addition to the requirements
for additional workers to carry out energy-efficiency retrofits on
many older homes to reduce heat loss and therefore minimize the
draw on electricity infrastructure.
“Fuel switching is the quickest and most effective way to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions in Canada’s building stock,” says Victor
Hyman, Executive Director of ClimateCare Canada. “And with
approximately 60% of homes in the country heated by fossil-fuels,
this transition creates a significant opportunity for change.”
Although the level of effort required to transition Canada’s
stock of commercial and institutional buildings could not be
completely assessed for this report, BuildForce estimates that the
change will create significant demands for non-residential workers.
A significant portion of the space and water heating units
installed in these buildings is currently powered by fossil
fuels.
“While retrofitting Canada’s buildings is a top priority for
achieving a greener future, it will not be without challenges,”
says Kevin Lee, Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian Home
Builders’ Association. “Achieving the targets set by the Government
of Canada will require a significant increase in both consumer
incentives and support programs, the cost competitiveness of these
alternative solutions, and then on top of that, the additional
workforce required to carry out these transition projects. The
scenario also necessarily assumes that there would be sufficient
power generation and grid capacity to heat Canada’s housing stock,
which there currently is not, and which would require significant
investment to create. This study still gives a sense of the
magnitude of the challenge and points to important hurdles to be
overcome in pursuit of these goals.”
This report was produced with the support and input of a variety
of stakeholders from across the construction sector, and was funded
in part by the Government of Canada's Sectoral Workforce Solutions
Program.
About BuildForce CanadaBuildForce Canada is a
national industry-led organization that represents all sectors of
Canada’s construction industry. Its mandate is to support the
labour market development needs of the construction and maintenance
industry. As part of these activities, BuildForce works with key
industry stakeholders, including contractors, proponents of
construction, labour providers, governments, and training providers
to identify both demand and supply trends that will impact labour
force capacity in the sector, and supports the career searches of
job seekers wanting to work in the industry. BuildForce also leads
programs and initiatives that support workforce upskilling,
workforce productivity improvements, improvements to training
modalities, human resource tools to support the adoption of
industry best practices, as well as other value-added initiatives
focused on supporting the industry’s labour force development
needs. Visit www.buildforce.ca.
For further information, contact Bill Ferreira, Executive
Director, BuildForce Canada, at ferreira@buildforce.ca or
613-569-5552 ext. 2220.