Less pollution from new buildings is the plan in Mississauga
Published April 25, 2024 at 5:13 pm
Mississauga is preparing to go greener as more buildings rise up in the coming years across Canada’s seventh-largest city.
City of Mississauga council recently approved a series of updates to the city’s Green Development Standards, which guide how office towers, highrise condos and other structures are constructed with the environment in mind.
The idea, the city says, is to ensure “new buildings are energy efficient and create less pollution, helping us reduce our carbon footprint.”
With buildings creating about 50 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions in Mississauga, city officials said it’s time to expand the guidelines — both mandatory and voluntary — for developers to follow.
Acting Mayor Matt Mahoney said in a news release those emissions “can be greatly reduced through better building and site design and through the updated Green Development Standards in our site plan process.
“Greener buildings not only help us tackle climate change, they also save everyone from owners to renters, more money through energy efficiency,” he continued, noting the updated standards “provide clear direction to the development industry on how to design buildings that will help us achieve the objectives set out in our Climate Change Action Plan. We want to work closely with the building industry to achieve our shared goal of a greener Mississauga.”
Videos
In updating the GDS, the city said it consulted with residents, industry representatives and the development industry with respect to both mandatory and voluntary standards added to the program.
Senior city staff also checked in with best practices implemented in other Ontario municipalities to ensure consistency from one region to the next, an important factor for developers, according to city officials.
“Our updated GDS will help the local building industry cut down on harmful emissions and better prepare for climate change impacts, ensuring that new buildings under site plan control are better for everyone — nature, people and our local economy,” said Andrew Whittemore, Mississauga’s commissioner of planning and building. “Mississauga is doing what we can, within our jurisdiction, to tackle climate change through better building design and operation. Small changes can make a big difference in reducing (greenhouse gases) and energy use.”
Created in 2012, the city’s GDS have been updated periodically over the years.
insauga's Editorial Standards and Policies advertising