Summary
This is a Building Performance Insights report from the Performance Insights project. View the main page for additional context.
City of Edmonton Part 3 Performance Path Study:
Multi-unit residential buildings (MURBs), NECB 2020: Energy performance and breakdown of energy tier
- Energy Tiers: This is a small sample of 8 buildings from 2024. Most MURBs (5 of 8, or 62.5%) were built to the minimum energy performance Tier 1. The other 3 (37.5%) reached Tier 2, and none reached Tier 3 or 4. Within the Tier 1 buildings, the median performance is about 5.8% better than the reference building, with a range of roughly 1–11%. Tier 2 buildings reported savings of roughly 25–27%. 2/3 Tier 2 buildings are being developed by the City of Edmonton.
Multi-unit residential buildings (MURBs), NECB 2017: Energy performance
- Energy savings: NECB 2017 has no performance tiers, so results are reported as savings against the reference building. We evaluated 66 permits. Every building modelled better than the reference building. Just over half (34/66) reported savings greater than 20%; the most common range was 25–30% (14 buildings), and 4 buildings exceeded 40%.
Industrial, Commercial and Institutional (ICI), NECB 2020: Energy performance and breakdown of energy tier
- Energy Tiers: This sample includes 13 projects across a wide range of building types, including industrial sites, offices, fast food and commercial spaces. Most ICI projects (11 of 13, or 85%) were built to the minimum energy performance tier, with median savings of about 4.1% and a range of roughly 0.4–19%. The two Tier 2 projects (15%) were an office and a community gathering space, neither of which was City-owned. They reported savings of roughly 30–34%, with a median of 31.9%. No projects reached Tier 3 or 4.
Industrial, Commercial and Institutional (ICI), NECB 2017: Energy performance
- Energy savings: 121 permits, the majority of them offices, warehouses or retail. As with the MURBs, all buildings modelled better than the reference building. Results cluster at the low end: 45 permits reported savings of 0–5%, and only about 15% exceeded 20%.
For all archetypes
Under NECB 2020, envelope improvements are doing less work than expected. Median wall insulation fell below the NECB 2020 prescriptive minimum (RSI 4.65) at both tiers for MURBs and ICI. No ICI wall reached the minimum, and only a few MURB walls did. Roof insulation was also mostly below the minimum (RSI 8.26), with only the top of the MURB and ICI ranges reaching it.
For MURBs, window RSI was consistently at or above the NECB minimum (0.58), and the fenestration and door-to-wall ratio (FDWR) stayed below the 32% maximum. ICI NECB 2020 was the exception on windows. Tier 1 window RSI had a median of 0.46, below the minimum, which the report calls an anomaly. At Tier 2, window and roof performance improved, but FDWR increased rather than decreased, and wall RSI did not improve.
Under NECB 2017, the pattern reverses: walls, roofs and windows all averaged above the prescriptive minimums.
- MURB averages were wall 3.88 vs 3.6, roof 7.92 vs 7.25, and window 0.65 vs 0.37.
- ICI averages were wall 5.20, roof 8.89 and window 0.52.
ICI walls and roofs were noticeably better than MURB walls and roofs. The report notes this sets Edmonton apart from the Calgary dataset, where NECB 2017 MURB walls and roofs averaged below the minimum.
On mechanical systems, natural gas remains the dominant heating fuel in both groups. The NECB 2020 datasets had no fully electric, heat pump or district energy systems:
- MURBs split between condensing boilers (37%), non-condensing boilers (25%), furnaces (25%) and hybrid systems (13%).
- ICI leaned more heavily on hybrid systems (46%), followed by furnaces (31%), condensing boilers (15%) and non-condensing boilers (8%).
Efficiency rises with tier. MURB average heating efficiency rose from about 87% at Tier 1 to 92% at Tier 2, and HRV/ERV effectiveness rose from about 70% to 86%. ICI heating and cooling efficiency both improved at Tier 2. Electric resistance and air-source heat pumps appear only in the NECB 2017 datasets: 5 electric and 4 ASHP among MURBs, and 11 electric and 4 ASHP among ICI. No group used district energy.