In-House explains OCH sustainable housing in Canada

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[Visual: In a bright studio, Joelle Hamilton, a woman with long brown hair
wearing a black blouse, sits across a table from Daniel Dicaire, a man with
short brown hair and glasses wearing a suit. They both have microphones and
glasses of water in front of them, while Joelle has a tablet and Daniel has a
notebook. The perspective shifts between shots of them individually and a
profile shot of both of them.]

[Speaker: Joelle Hamilton, Communications & Marketing – CMHC]

Why are you so passionate about sustainability and conservation and
housing?

00:00:04:00

[Speaker: Daniel Dicaire, Senior Manager of Conservation and Sustainability,
Ottawa Community Housing]

There are some really exciting things happening at OCH in terms of
sustainability. So we know that more efficient buildings are going to cost
us less to operate in the long term.

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[Speaker: Joelle Hamilton, Communications & Marketing – CMHC]

What are some of the ways that Canadians will feel the impact of
sustainability?

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[Speaker: Daniel Dicaire, Senior Manager of Conservation and Sustainability,
Ottawa Community Housing]

People think that because maybe there’s a premium for sustainability, that
it’s actually counter to affordability, right? That’s a false
conception.

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box reads, “Canada’s housing market.”]

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[Speaker: Joelle Hamilton, Communications & Marketing – CMHC]

You’re listening to In-House – Canada’s Housing Podcast, where we
share the latest on Canada’s housing market.

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Podcast.”]

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[Visual: Joelle Hamilton and Daniel Dicaire sit at the table in the studio. A
box with text that reads, “Joelle Hamilton, Communications &
Marketing – CMHC” appears briefly.]

[Speaker: Joelle Hamilton, Communications & Marketing – CMHC]

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to In-House. I’m your host,
Joelle Hamilton, and today we’re talking about how the housing sector can
tackle climate change and prioritize sustainability and affordability. With
me today is Daniel Dicaire, Senior Manager of Sustainability and
Conservation at Ottawa Community Housing Corporation, or OCH for
short.
Daniel, thanks for being here with us today.

00:01:09:00

[Speaker: Daniel Dicaire, Senior Manager of Conservation and Sustainability,
Ottawa Community Housing]

Thank you so much for having me, Joelle. It’s a pleasure to be
here.

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[Speaker: Joelle Hamilton, Communications & Marketing – CMHC]

So I first want to start by congratulating you and your team for receiving
or winning CMHC’s President’s Medal for Outstanding Housing Research. It’s a
prize that we give away every year to those who really deserve it. So
congratulations to you and your team.

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[Speaker: Daniel Dicaire, Senior Manager of Conservation and Sustainability,
Ottawa Community Housing]

Well, thank you so much. We’ve been doing a lot of really innovative
research for our new developments. So it’s just a great opportunity to share
it with as many people as possible.

00:01:39:00

[Speaker: Joelle Hamilton, Communications & Marketing – CMHC]

So I’d like to first start by asking you to tell us a little bit more about
you, your role at OCH, and also what OCH is doing to make sustainability a
key consideration in housing.

00:01:54:00

[Speaker: Daniel Dicaire, Senior Manager of Conservation and Sustainability,
Ottawa Community Housing]

[Visual: A box with text that reads, “Daniel Dicaire, Senior Manager of
Conservation and Sustainability, Ottawa Community Housing” appears
briefly.]

Well, I’m the senior manager for conservation sustainability at Ottawa
Community Housing, and basically that touches every aspect of the
organization, whether that’s in new developments, existing buildings, as
well as supporting our tenants and our communities at large to become more
sustainable. There are some really exciting things happening at OCH in terms
of sustainability. We kind of have 3 broad sectors that we’re focusing
on. We’ve got our new developments, we’ve got our existing buildings, and
then what we call kind of our community and tenant infrastructure and
support. So on the new building side of things, basically all of our new
buildings are very high performance. We use the passive house standard to
design all of our envelopes. We use some really high-performance mechanical
systems when we design in order to be able to heat and cool our buildings.
And then we incorporate as much renewable energy like geothermal or solar
into that overall energy package for those buildings. When it comes to our
existing buildings, those are really the important ones because they’re the
ones that are already with us. They will be with us for another 50
years.

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symbol appears briefly.]

We’re doing a lot of planning and kind of research. So we started with
doing a GHG inventory, so “greenhouse gas emissions inventory.”
We identified the 27,000 tons of emissions that OCH is responsible for. So
that’s our scope 1, scope 2, scope 3. And from there, we also did
some pilot projects in order to try and figure out how we can decarbonize
those existing buildings. So, we did the Presland Net-Zero Prefabricated
Deep Energy Retrofit, one of the first in Canada, where we actually
met – we converted 4 homes in 1 block of townhomes to
net-zero. And then lastly, we try to take those lessons learned and bring
them to the rest of the portfolio. So in order to do that, we’re actually
partnering with Hydro Ottawa, our local distribution company, in order to do
carbon pathway studies. The goal there is that we want to incorporate the
lessons learned or that decarbonization path into the existing capital plan.
So when those assets that are emitting, our boilers, our air make-ups, when
those come up for replacement, we know the GHG-reduction potential that we
could capture with the replacements, we see the decarbonization technologies
we could be using, we know the incremental cost of that over the
like-for-like replacement, and obviously the potential impact that that will
have on our electricity grid both at the building level and for overall
Hydro Ottawa’s grid. And lastly, when I mentioned the community
infrastructure and support, I mentioned the 27,000 tons that OCH emits or is
responsible for. There’s probably about another 36,000 tons that is coming
out of our communities as a result of tenant activities. So that’s the
natural gas they’re burning in furnaces we own or their vehicle emissions or
undiverted organic waste that’s going to landfill. So part of our role there
is we need to provide the infrastructure for the tenants to be able to do
their diversion for waste, for example, or to be able to plug in a vehicle
or replacing a furnace with a heat pump in order for them to be able to get
off of natural gas, for example. And then the other piece of that community
support is the research that we have been partnering with various
institutions and organizations like University of Ottawa, University of
Toronto, University of Carleton, Waterloo as well, Natural Resources Canada,
the National Research Council. Basically, we’ve got a lot of data and we
want to use it as best as possible to advance sustainability within the
housing sector. And in fact, it is through that kind of research with one of
our development partners that we were able to do research, which received
the President’s Medal Award.

00:05:52:00

[Speaker: Joelle Hamilton, Communications & Marketing – CMHC]

Why are you so passionate about sustainability and conservation in
housing?

00:05:57:00

[Speaker: Daniel Dicaire, Senior Manager of Conservation and Sustainability,
Ottawa Community Housing]

Housing is this absolutely massive opportunity, also a massive challenge.
Maybe that’s what’s attractive about it. I mean, the building sector
represents 18% of Canada’s emissions, even more if we factor in some of the
electricity production. There are literally thousands of buildings scattered
across Canada, all of which need some good attention, and we’re building
more, right? So it just feels like this massive opportunity and challenge. I
can remember when I interviewed for the position, it was a brand-new
position. The dream scenario in my mind was, hey, being handed, you know, a
building that might be a little bit old, that might need some efficiency
retrofits and being able to do… to plan those retrofits. Basically, they
said, that sounds great because we’ve got hundreds of them, right? So it was
a really… I wasn’t sure I’d end up here, but it’s been an absolutely
fantastic ride.

00:06:52:00

[Speaker: Joelle Hamilton, Communications & Marketing – CMHC]

So now I want to talk about the benefits of sustainability, because when we
think sustainability, we might not also associate it with affordability and,
like, housing that is affordable. So in the short and in the long term, what
are some of the ways that Canadians will feel the impact of
sustainability?

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[Speaker: Daniel Dicaire, Senior Manager of Conservation and Sustainability,
Ottawa Community Housing]

What you just described is exactly like… it’s a key concept. People think
that because maybe there’s a premium for sustainability, that it’s actually
counter to affordability, right? I have to say that that’s a false
conception. And OCH kind of can see where those two meet. We very much
understand that affordability and sustainability work hand in hand. They’re
very much linked together. As you were kind of describing, maybe the
knee-jerk reaction when we’ve got a housing crisis is, hey, we need to
increase that supply. We absolutely do. And so we want to focus on a low
capital cost, maybe low rents, very low selling price. Typically, those
things may not include sustainability. But we’ve seen that type of approach
in the past, and I can attest – or we can attest that that creates
something usually around energy poverty, right? Maybe your rent is $100, but
then you can end up with utility bills that are $500 or $600. Really, that
happens when maybe new developments aren’t really bothering with
airtightness or insulation levels or high-performance mechanicals or maybe
they’re even renting the mechanical systems rather than actually buying them
outright. Really, that kind of pushes the problem around. You are basically…
The savings from that process don’t necessarily get translated to the actual
consumer. Really, you end up with kind of a false affordability if you are
lured by very low costs on your capital, but you end up with really high
operating. OCH is an owner-operator of its buildings for 50 to 100 years, so
we have an incentive or we’re able to see that link between those operating
costs as well as those capital dollars. So we know that more efficient
buildings are going to cost us less to operate in the long term. And we know
that we can recover the small incremental capital costs from a
sustainability upgrade with the generous savings that those systems are
going to provide us over the long run. Really, it’s an investment in that
long term. The other thing you have to realize: When we’re designing
buildings, it’s an investment that will outlive all of us. The buildings
that we’re building today will be standing long after we are gone. So it’s
really an investment for society in the long run to make sure that those are
as energy-efficient as possible. So we really have to realize if we are
actually serious about affordability, we have to be serious about
sustainability as well, specifically when it comes that there is a housing
crisis that’s also meeting a climate crisis that we’re facing right
now.

00:09:55:00

[Speaker: Joelle Hamilton, Communications & Marketing – CMHC]

Because I guess, like, the decisions that we make today are important
decisions because these buildings, you know, you said a long time, like the
decisions we make today impact the buildings where they’re going to be in
100 years from now.

00:10:07:00

[Speaker: Daniel Dicaire, Senior Manager of Conservation and Sustainability,
Ottawa Community Housing]

Exactly. You’re basically locking in consumption for the next 50 to 100
years. So think –you’re not thinking about the next 5 years. Designers
should be thinking about 50 to 100 years. How am I impacting the future?
Quite literally.

00:10:21:00

[Speaker: Joelle Hamilton, Communications & Marketing – CMHC]

What excites you the most about the future of sustainability in housing in
Canada, you know, over the next 10 years, let’s say, or more if you want to
project that far?

00:10:37:00

[Speaker: Daniel Dicaire, Senior Manager of Conservation and Sustainability,
Ottawa Community Housing]

How about this? I really do think that prioritizing sustainability as part
of our housing in the next 10 years is absolutely crucial. At the end of the
day, it really comes down to money. In order to make sustainability a
priority, we need to show the boost that it can bring to the Canadian
economy. And the really good news is that we’re kind of sitting on a gold
mine when it comes to sustainability in housing specifically. It’s not only
good for the planet, but there is a massive opportunity for the Canadian
economy. If we’re looking for jobs, we literally need thousands and
thousands of skilled trades that can install the heat pumps or the
high-performance windows or the insulation or the solar panels, right? In
fact, we could even be inviting the same trades that are drilling oil wells
to come and drill geothermal wells with the exact same equipment. And all
that could not only be for new buildings, it also applies to the retrofit
market of which we already know we’ve got hundreds of thousands of homes,
right? We need the manufacturers to also come and bring this technology,
provide it locally, maybe even manufacture it locally, and then train our
local maintenance staff to take care of that equipment and those buildings
for the next 20, 50, 100 years. It’s also a great way to avoid tariffs. The
vast majority of the manufacturers that are currently providing these types
of technologies en masse, they’re Europeans. European companies have great
opportunities to create friendly partnerships that will benefit both
countries. What we have to realize is that under the current system that we
have, our inefficient buildings take up a lot of room on the grid and our
municipalities are actually importing the vast majority of their energy. So
we’re kind of sending money outside of our communities. We are vulnerable to
fluctuations in oil prices controlled by foreign interests. Geothermal,
solar, as well as high-performance buildings kind of inherently, those are
all technologies that have local jobs: we are kind of mining or accessing
our own energy locally, and we could be paying local companies for local
jobs and stimulating that local economy. So really, there is this massive
opportunity in high-performance buildings and sustainability for the
Canadian economy. We just have to grab it.

00:13:07:00

[Speaker: Joelle Hamilton, Communications & Marketing – CMHC]

How will Canadians feel the impact of sustainability? And a follow-up
question to that is, what does this all mean for the average Canadian who is
looking for a place to live?

00:13:17:00

[Speaker: Daniel Dicaire, Senior Manager of Conservation and Sustainability,
Ottawa Community Housing]

Absolutely. Here’s how I see the impact on the average Canadian: So
Canadians are absolutely right to be asking for affordable housing. That is,
it makes perfect sense. But as I described before, affordability and
sustainability are linked together. And if we don’t address sustainability
while we’re addressing our affordability, similar to the situation I was
describing before, you can end up with maybe societal energy poverty. We
have to realize that we are all linked by our electricity grid, our utility
grid, and that really ties our future together. So what would societal
energy poverty look like? Let’s say that we keep building to the
energy-efficiency standard that we did 30 years ago, and we don’t retrofit
any of those buildings that are currently on there. Those inefficient
buildings, they’re kind of like a car at the grocery store that’s taking up
2 parking spots. They’re taking up more than their share of the room,
right? And so what that means is that we’re limiting the capacity on our
grid. So you can’t fit as much volume of housing that we need that those
Canadians are demanding onto that existing infrastructure. And at the end of
the day, that means fewer homes get built or connected, and the homes that
do get connected end up with higher utility costs. So, in that situation,
you’re actually setting up billions of dollars in housing crisis that will
be shortly followed by billions of dollars in infrastructure crisis, right?
You really have to address those two together and that’s what I’m hoping
Canadians can see. If we really want to address housing affordability, we
should really be demanding that all new housing be high performance and that
we retrofit our existing buildings. That is how we’re going to have ample
amounts of space on our existing infrastructure in order to add that huge
amount of volume that we need to address our housing crisis. We need to
recognize that preserving our existing infrastructure, our existing housing
stock is required as part of increasing the overall housing stock. That way,
if we were able to do that, we’d be able to add more housing to the grid
that would be affordable, the utilities that are powering those homes would
be just as affordable, we’d be sending extremely clear market signals that
would reduce the cost of both the technology and the housing overall, and
all that money would be spent on Canadian companies paying Canadian workers.
That’s really the opportunity for Canadians in sustainability in
housing.

00:15:54:00

[Speaker: Joelle Hamilton, Communications & Marketing – CMHC]

I’d like to end this episode by finding out a little bit more about what
you and OCH are up to in the next year and where we can stay up to date for
new developments coming out of OCH.

00:16:06:00

[Speaker: Daniel Dicaire, Senior Manager of Conservation and Sustainability,
Ottawa Community Housing]

Absolutely. So OCH is currently delivering some high-performance housing.
As I mentioned, we’ve delivered 600 units over the past few years. We’ve got
another 600 that is in construction and we’re aiming to have over 1,000 in
design, kind of ready to go, and you’ll find that on our website. At the
same time, we are preparing our existing building stock to decarbonize
through those carbon pathway studies that I was describing. We want to know
how we can decarbonize our existing assets according to our capital plan.
And I would encourage any building owner, any portfolio manager to also be
pursuing that type of decarbonization capital plan because we all need to do
this together. And for supports in the community, you’re going to see we’re
implementing some car-share programs. We are adding EV charging stations to
our buildings to give access to tenants in order for them to decarbonize
their transportation. We are doing waste diversion so that the large volume
of organics that’s coming through our high rises could actually be diverted
and therefore we save space in our landfill as well as reduce the overall
GHG emissions. So there’s some really exciting stuff coming out of
sustainability at OCH.

00:17:21:00

[Speaker: Joelle Hamilton, Communications & Marketing – CMHC]

Does your team sleep? Like, you guys are working on so many different
things. And so I was like, do they sleep?

00:17:29:00

[Speaker: Daniel Dicaire, Senior Manager of Conservation and Sustainability,
Ottawa Community Housing]

Here’s the thing: One, it’s a very, very small team when you’re talking
about the sustainability department. Specifically, we’re only a group of
three.

00:17:37:00

[Speaker: Joelle Hamilton, Communications & Marketing – CMHC]

Okay.

00:17:38:00

[Speaker: Daniel Dicaire, Senior Manager of Conservation and Sustainability,
Ottawa Community Housing]

But we end up working in everybody else’s jurisdiction. As we were
describing before, sometimes that can cause frictions, but in a way, we have
to leverage the rest of the organization’s resources because we’re not the
ones doing the boiler replacements, we’re helping them make that boiler
replacement more efficient. We’re not the ones replacing light bulbs, we’re
helping write the specs, we’re helping find the funding to be able to do
those projects. We’re supporting finance officers in accessing funding,
preparing proposals. So it’s, I really have to stress, it is a huge team
effort in order for OCH to be able to achieve the sustainability targets
that it’s doing right now.

00:18:19:00

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[Speaker: Joelle Hamilton, Communications & Marketing – CMHC]

So that’s already it for today’s episode. A big thank you to you, Daniel,
for spending time with us in the studio today. We’re very excited to follow
you and OCH’s progress over the next year. And thank you to everyone who
took the time to join us today In-House.

00:18:38:00

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[Speaker: Joelle Hamilton, Communications & Marketing – CMHC]

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00:18:57:00

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