Are There Plans To Rewrite the NECB To Allow For Decarbonization To Be Credited? | Video

CIET's Ask Us Anything series is a free monthly Q&A session with industry experts.

The National Energy Code for Buildings (NECB) Ask Us Anything session featured Justin Phill, CIET Trainer, Professional Engineer, and ASHRAE certified Building Energy Modeling Professional.

Justin brought his expertise to this session and answered this question about amending the code.

Question: NECB Section 8 is written as pass/ fail compliance, having many exclusions for what you can take credit for (for example, plumbing fixtures or electrification). This can make it difficult to get high relative savings. Are there plans to rewrite the code or amend it to allow for decarbonization or other items to be credited?

Answer:

Every time the codes are updated, it goes for public review where anybody is free to comment on the code, to propose new clauses or changes to existing clauses. I would encourage anyone who is finding some archetypes or some clauses that are particularly onerous, or there's a loophole, to comment on these public reviews. That's probably one of the better ways to get ideas to code writers so they can take those into account for future versions of the codes. 

When we're looking at Tier 1 in the upcoming NECB 2020 it will be a little bit harder compared to NECB 2017, but I don't think some of the nuances of NECB will prevent certain archetypes from being able to pass or fail. But there are three other tiers above that too and we're looking at a 25% performance increase, a 50% performance increase, or a 60% performance increase. It is up to the provinces to adopt those tiers. There is an opportunity for the province to do their own analysis too to see if it works for their jurisdiction to adopt those higher tiers, or maybe they can look at more creative ways to adopt just to make sure that we don't run into an impossible situation to comply with the code.

Take a closer look at the NECB and how it is being used in 2024.

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