Buildings account for more than half of Toronto’s greenhouse gas emissions, mostly due to energy and water use.
Toronto’s Energy and Water Reporting By-law, under Chapter 367 of Toronto’s Municipal Code, requires owners of buildings 929 m2 (10,000 ft2) and larger to report energy and water use to the City annually. Buildings 4,645m2 (50,000 ft2) and larger will begin to report in 2024, and buildings 929m2 (10,000 ft2) and larger will be required to report in 2025.
The City will calculate annual GHG emissions for each building using the reported energy and water data. This data also allows building owners to track their buildings’ performance over time and compare it with the performance of other buildings that are similar. This can help building owners identify opportunities to increase their buildings’ energy efficiency and reduce GHG emissions.
Ontario’s Energy and Water Reporting and Benchmarking (EWRB) regulation (O.Reg. 506/18) also requires large buildings to report their annual energy and water use to the Ministry of Energy by July 1st of each year.
See below to find out whether your building is required to report, and to access information, resources, and supports from the City of Toronto that will help you with the energy and water benchmarking and reporting process.
Benchmarking is the process of tracking a building’s energy and water use and comparing its performance over time, and to the performance of similar buildings. Benchmarking is the first step towards improving building efficiency.
Benchmarking your building’s energy and water use can help you:
There are two key reporting requirements Toronto building owners need to be aware of:
Owners of buildings that have a gross floor area of 4,645 square meters (50,000 square feet) and larger:
Owners of buildings that have a gross floor area of 929 square meters (10,000 square feet) and larger:
Please note: The Gross Floor Area (GFA) of a single building or structure is the sum of the total area of each floor level of a building, above and below the ground, measured from the exterior surface of the enclosed exterior walls on each floor level.
Please note: Some building types are exempt from reporting EWRB data to the Ontario Ministry of Energy. For a full list of the property types required to report under O.Reg. 506/18, see the List of building types in the Ministry of Energy’s guide to energy and water reporting.
The City of Toronto’s Energy and Water Reporting By-law requires building owners to report both descriptive information and performance information for each building that is subject to the by-law’s reporting requirement.
This helps the City to identify your building and distinguish it from other properties. Descriptive information also helps the City to compare your building’s performance to an appropriate set of similar buildings.
Examples of descriptive information include:
This tells the City how much energy and water were used by your building during the previous year. For example, if your reporting deadline is July 2, 2024, then you will report how much energy and water your building used during the 2023 calendar year.
Examples of performance information include:
For a complete list of the descriptive and performance information that building owners are required to report for each building, please see section 367-2.2 of the City’s Energy and Water Reporting By-law.
The deadline for reporting energy and water data to the City of Toronto is the first business day in July each year.
The deadline for reporting EWRB data to the Ontario Ministry of Energy is July 1st each year.
Building owners report their buildings’ data to both the City of Toronto and the Ontario Ministry of Energy using Energy Star Portfolio Manager. Energy Star Portfolio Manager is a free online tool developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and adapted for use in Canada by Natural Resources Canada.
For a 2-page summary of the reporting process, see Summary Guide for Toronto Building Owners.
The City of Toronto has created a series of instructional videos to help you document and report your building’s energy and water use using the Energy Star Portfolio Manager tool:
For detailed written instructions on how to submit your report using Energy Star Portfolio Manager, please refer to the Ministry of Energy Portfolio Manager Guide.
When you are ready to submit your data, use the reporting buttons below:
Report to the City of TorontoReport to the Ontario Ministry of Energy
Owners of properties in Toronto with buildings that have a gross floor area of 4,645 square meters (50,000 square feet) and larger are required to report their buildings’ energy and water consumption data to the City starting in 2024.
Owners of buildings that have a gross floor area of 929 square meters (10,000 square feet) and larger are required to report their building’s energy and water data to the City starting in 2025.
For condominium buildings:
Please note that condominium buildings are composed of multiple properties (individual condominium units and condominium common areas). In 2024, condominium property owners (i.e. condominium unit holders and condominium corporations) are only required to report the energy use of their condominium properties (i.e. condominium units or condominium common areas) to the City if the individual condominium property (i.e. unit or common area) is 4,645 square meters (50,000 square feet) or larger, with this threshold changing to 929 square meters (10,000 square feet) in 2025.
The by-law applies to buildings located within the current boundaries of Toronto. Properties located within the boundaries of the City of Toronto have postal codes that begin with “M”.
When determining whether your building needs to report, use the following definition of gross floor area (GFA):
Gross Floor Area – The gross floor area is the sum of the total area of each floor level of a building, above and below the ground, measured from the exterior of the main wall of each floor level.
Gross floor area includes spaces like hallways, common areas, atriums, elevator shafts, mechanical equipment areas, and storage rooms. Any exterior, unroofed or open-air spaces -such as outdoor parking areas- should not be included in the calculation of gross floor area.
Indoor parking areas should be included in the calculation of gross floor area for the purposes of determining whether the by-law applies to a particular building, but the gross floor area of any indoor parking areas must be entered into Energy Star Portfolio Manager separately from the gross floor area of the rest of the building, as detailed below.
When you are setting up a property profile for your building in Energy Star Portfolio Manager, the property profile page will ask you to enter your building’s total gross floor area. The value you should enter in the Gross Floor Area field on the property profile page is your building’s total gross floor area minus the gross floor area of your interior parking areas. This is because Portfolio Manager tracks the GFA for parking separately and in addition to all other property uses. So, the GFA you enter on your property profile page should be the gross floor area of the portion of your property that is used for any and all property uses EXCEPT parking. You will add parking as an additional property use on a later screen, where you will have the opportunity to specify how much gross floor area is devoted to your indoor parking area(s). For more information, see the City of Toronto’s instructional video on how to Add a Property in Energy Star Portfolio Manager. This video has information about both Gross Floor Area and Parking.
If a property has more than one owner, all property owners are jointly responsible for submitting a single report for the property. The task of reporting may be delegated by the property owners to a single property owner or to a third party, but all property owners will be responsible if a report is not submitted for the property.
For condominium buildings:
Please see the “Who needs to report?” FAQ. The guidance on multiple owners applies to situations where there are multiple owners per property. Please note that condominiums are buildings made up of multiple properties, which is not the same thing as a single property having multiple owners. If a condominium property is required to report, the guidance on multiple property owners provided above applies at the property level (i.e. at the level of the individual condominium unit).
You can download the data from individual Toronto Water accounts directly from the City of Toronto’s MyWaterToronto online self-serve portal. To learn more, watch this short how-to video.
The City of Toronto will provide aggregated whole-building water consumption data for a property in the following two cases:
To request aggregated whole-building water consumption data from the City, email buildingreporting@toronto.ca.
To receive aggregated water data, you must provide the property address and the Toronto Water account numbers associated with the property. If you do not know the water account numbers for the property, you must provide the property address and the assessment roll number to allow the City to look up the water account numbers for the property.
Please note: If you are a consultant requesting water data on behalf of a property owner, please provide a signed letter from the property owner giving the City of Toronto permission to provide you with water data for their properties.
You can request your monthly electricity and natural gas data by using the online data request forms on Toronto Hydro and Enbridge Gas. To learn more, watch this short how-to video.
Toronto’s Energy and Water Reporting By-law requires owners of buildings 9,290m2 (100,000ft2) and larger to have a certified professional verify their data once every five years, starting with the first year they report to the City.
The certified professional takes a second look over the data to make sure that values have been entered into Energy Star Portfolio Manager appropriately and to ensure that the values entered look reasonable and are within the ranges to be expected for that building (e.g. checking that the value entered for electricity use reflects the whole building’s electricity use and not just the electricity used in the building’s common areas).
For the purposes of data verification, examples of certified professionals include:
To learn more, watch this how-to video on verifying your data.
The City of Toronto’s Energy and Water Reporting By-law (under Municipal Code Chapter 367) requires large buildings in Toronto to report their energy and water use data to the City each year by the first business day in July.
Ontario’s Energy and Water Reporting and Benchmarking (EWRB) regulation (O.Reg. 506/18) requires large buildings in Ontario to report their annual energy and water use to the Ministry of Energy each year by July 1st.
If you are new to benchmarking and reporting, watch this short video to learn how benchmarking and reporting energy and water use can help building owners improve building performance and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
To attest that your data has been verified by a certified professional, follow these steps:
Watch a video on how to verify your data.
No, you do not need a unique identifier (like an EWRB ID) to report to the City of Toronto in 2024. Instead, please include the assessment roll number for the property in the “Custom ID 1” field of the property’s profile in Portfolio Manager.
Before you report data for a property to the City of Toronto, be sure to add the property’s assessment roll number to the property profile in Portfolio Manager. You can find your property’s assessment roll number on your property assessment or property tax bill.
To add an assessment roll number to a property profile in Portfolio Manager, follow these steps:
See how to add an Assessment Roll Number to a property profile.
For 2024 only, if your property already reports to the province for BPS reporting and the Custom ID fields in your property profile already contain information related to that reporting requirement, enter the property’s assessment roll number in the “Toronto Building Performance ID” field in the Standard IDs section. To enter a roll number into the “Toronto Building Performance ID” field in the Standard IDs section, follow these steps:
Condominium buildings are composed of multiple properties that each have distinct Assessment Roll Numbers (e.g. individual condo units and the common areas owned by the condominium corporation each have separate roll numbers). Please also refer to the “Who needs to report?” FAQ. If an individual condo unit is required to report, you should use the Assessment Roll Number associated with the condo unit. If a condo’s common areas must report, you should use the Assessment Roll Number associated with the condo’s common areas.
Although the Ontario Ministry of Energy allows building owners to report multiple buildings on the same property as a single property profile in Energy Star Portfolio Manger, the City of Toronto’s Energy and Water Reporting By-law (Municipal Code chapter 367) requires building owners to submit separate reports for each building on the same property. This means you will need to create separate property profiles in Energy Star Portfolio Manager for each separate building that meets the size threshold for reporting to the City (i.e. for each building that has a gross floor area of 4,645 square meters or 50,000 square feet).
In 2024, the City of Toronto is providing an exception where multiple properties share a utility meter and there is no cost sharing agreement in place for the meter. In such a case, the property owner can apply for an exception to submit a single report for the buildings that share the utility meter(s). To request this type of exception, email buildingreporting@toronto.ca and include the property addresses and roll numbers of the buildings with the shared meter(s). If you are submitting a single report for multiple buildings with a shared utility meter, you can create a ‘parent’ property profile in Energy Star Portfolio Manager, and add the individual buildings with the shared meter(s) as ‘child’ properties. (For instructions on how to do this, see How to Benchmark a Campus in Portfolio Manger).
For energy management purposes, the City recommends installing separate utility meters for separate buildings, or even sub-meters if separate utility meters are not an option. However, where individual building meters are not available, use the cost-sharing agreement for the meter to pro-rate the consumption from the shared utility meter and assign a portion of the usage to each building serviced by the shared meter.
If there is no cost-sharing agreement in place (e.g. as may be the case for a university or hospital campus), then you can apply for an exception that will allow you to report the buildings that share the utility meter as a single multi-building property. To request this type of exception, email buildingreporting@toronto.ca and include the property addresses and roll numbers of the buildings with the shared meter(s).
When you are setting up your property profile in Portfolio Manager, you will be asked to check a box at the bottom of the “Set Up a Property” page indicating whether your property’s energy consumption includes parking areas. If you check this box, the next screen will ask you for details about “Parking Use”. This is where you can indicate the floor area of the indoor enclosed parking associated with your property, and whether the indoor enclosed parking has supplemental heating. If you didn’t add parking during your initial property use set up, you can add it later as an additional property use. For details, see this short video on adding parking as an additional property type.
When you are setting up a property profile for a multi-unit residential building in Portfolio Manager, you will be asked for a number of property use details. Report number of suites using the “Total Number of Residential Living Units” field in the “Details” tab for the property. To see where this field is on the “Details” tab, view this reminder from the City of Toronto’s video on how to Add a Multifamily Property to Portfolio Manager.
Unlike the Ontario Ministry of Energy’s Energy and Water Reporting and Benchmarking (EWRB) requirement, the City of Toronto’s Energy and Water Reporting By-law does not have ongoing exceptions for buildings with certain property uses. Buildings are required to report to the City in 2024 if they have a gross floor area of 4,645 square meters (50,000 square feet), regardless of property use.
However, there are some circumstances in which building owners may be granted full or partial exemptions from reporting for a particular year. These include:
Full Report Information Exemption: No energy and no water consumed
The reporting requirement does not apply to properties that did not consume any energy nor any water during the year for which energy and water consumption is required to be reported. For example, if a building didn’t consume any water and didn’t consume any energy in 2023, then the property owner would not be required to submit a report for that building for the reporting period ending July 2, 2024. The property owner does not have to apply for an exemption for the property in this circumstance.
A. Full Report Information Exemption: Newly Constructed Property
A property owner can request an exemption from reporting for a particular year if a property is newly constructed and a certificate of occupancy has not yet been issued or was issued during or after the year for which the building’s energy and water consumption must be reported. In this case, a property owner must apply for a reporting exemption for the property.
For example, if a newly constructed property was issued a certificate of occupancy in 2023 or later, the property owner would be exempt from submitting a report for the building on or before the July 2, 2024 reporting deadline.
B. Partial Exemption in 2024: Natural Gas Consumption Data
A property owner may be granted a partial exemption from reporting natural gas consumption data (and natural gas consumption data only) if all of the following conditions are true: the building owner is not the account holder for all of the Enbridge Gas accounts that service the building, and the building owner is unable to obtain an EWRB ID for the building because the building’s property type is not listed in the List of building types that are required to report to the Ministry of Energy under O. Reg. 506/18: Reporting of Energy Consumption and Water Use under the Electricity Act, 1998, and the lack of EWRB ID has prevented the building owner from obtaining aggregated whole-building gas consumption data from Enbridge Gas for the 2023 calendar year.
C. Partial Exemption in 2024: Electricity Consumption Data
A property owner may be granted a partial exemption from reporting electricity consumption data (and electricity consumption data only) if all of the following conditions are true: the building owner is not the account holder for all of the Toronto Hydro accounts that service the building, and the building owner is unable to obtain an EWRB ID for the building because the building’s property type is not listed in the List of building types that are required to report to the Ministry of Energy under O. Reg. 506/18: Reporting of Energy Consumption and Water Use under the Electricity Act, 1998, and the lack of EWRB ID has prevented the building owner from obtaining aggregated whole-building electricity data from Toronto Hydro for the 2023 calendar year.
D. Partial Exemption in 2024: Attestation by a certified professional (with respect to verification of report information)
The owner of a property that is 9,290 square meters (100,000 square feet) or larger may be granted a partial exemption from submitting an attestation that the report information has been verified by a certified professional if the property owner has already undertaken data verification for the property within the last 5 years for the purposes of complying with the provincial EWRB reporting requirement, as required by the Ministry of Energy under section 10 of O. Reg. 506/18: Energy Consumption and Water Use under the Electricity Act, 1998.
In each of the above circumstances (except where specifically indicated), the property owner or their representative must apply for an exemption or partial exemption for the particular property at least 60 days before the reporting deadline to which the exemption or partial exemption would apply.
(For example, to receive an exemption or partial exemption for the reporting period ending July 2, 2024, a building owner would need to submit a request for exemption on or before May 3, 2024).
A property owner can apply for an exemption for a property by completing the following online Exemption Request Form.
Requests for exemptions must be received at least 60 days before the report deadline. For the reporting period ending July 2, 2024, all requests for exemption must be received on or before May 3, 2024.
Extensions will only be granted to property owners in events beyond their reasonable control, such as death of the property owner, or a property owner’s inability to access their data due to having been hacked. In such cases, In such cases, property owners must complete the following online Extension Request Form.
A property owner can apply for an extension for a property by completing the following online Extension Request Form.
The City’s Better Building Partnership (BBP) arranges webinars to provide information and guidance on the reporting process.
The City is hosting two informational webinars to help building owners understand the City’s Energy and Water Reporting By-law and how to report their data:
Energy and Water Reporting By-law for Existing Buildings
On March 19, 2024 a webinar was held to share background information on the new reporting bylaw that requires building owners to report energy and water use to the City annually. Download the webinar presentation.
On April 25, 2024 a webinar was held to share tips on how to report and to demonstrate the value of comparing your building’s energy and water use to other similar buildings.
This series of videos provides step-by-step instructions on how to use Energy Star Portfolio Manager to document and report your building’s energy and water use.
Natural Resources Canada offers free ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager building energy benchmarking tools, information sessions, presentations and training webinars on their benchmarking training resources webpage.
For specific questions about ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager, please refer to the Natural Resources Canada Benchmarking FAQ or email your questions to buildings-batiments@nrcan-rncan.gc.ca.
Ontario’s Guide to Energy and Water Reporting provides a detailed overview of the EWRB regulation’s reporting requirements.
The Ministry of Energy’s Portfolio Manager Guide provides detailed written instructions on how to submit your report using Energy Star Portfolio Manager.
If you have questions about reporting that were not answered above, or you need assistance with some aspect of the reporting process, use the contact information below.
City of Toronto Energy and Water Reporting Help Centre
Email: buildingreporting@toronto.ca
Ontario Ministry of Energy EWRB Support Centre
Phone: 1-844-274-0689
Email: EWRBSupport@ontario.ca
The City’s Navigation & Support Services program can help you identify opportunities to improve your building’s energy efficiency and can help you access incentives and financing for energy retrofit projects.
For more information, visit Better Buildings Navigation & Support Services.