Realized Savings from Canada's Building Energy Codes

We assess realized energy and air leakage changes in homes constructed before and after new building energy code adoptions in three Canadian provinces: Ontario, New Brunswick, and Alberta. We find no energy or air leakage reductions attributable to more stringent code requirements. There is no evidence that natural gas consumption declined among houses built up to five years before or four years after a code change. Instead, a generalized improvement in residential electricity consumption and air leakage rates is observable at least three to five years before any new code adoptions, depending on the province. These pre-existing trends in electricity consumption and air leakage may point to changes in building industry practice preceding new building code adoptions, though further investigation is required to assess the drivers of these changes. The estimated energy savings are also not in line with ex-ante engineering projections, which predicted natural gas savings of about 10% and little to no electricity savings.