Energy benchmarking and bylaw reporting

ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager, and the municipal deadlines that now depend on it.

Benchmarking is the comparison of a building's energy use against itself over time and against comparable buildings. It is done in ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager, and for a growing number of Canadian buildings it is no longer optional.

Toronto has required reporting from buildings of 50,000 square feet and larger since 2024, and brings in buildings from 10,000 square feet in 2027, with a first deadline of 2 July 2027. That second cohort is tens of thousands of small commercial and multi-unit buildings whose owners have never benchmarked anything. Montreal requires owners of buildings of 2,000 square metres or more, or twenty-five or more dwelling units, to report by 30 June every year, with no size-based phasing at all.

Vancouver is the interesting exception. Council directed staff in May 2026 to pause enforcement of the Annual Greenhouse Gas and Energy Limits By-law, Canada's first building performance standard, with a report back expected in the first half of 2027. Reporting infrastructure remains in place. If you were planning compliance work against that bylaw, the ground has moved.

We set up the Portfolio Manager account, get the data in, file to the deadline, and tell you what the score means rather than just what it is.

Commercial — the rest of it