The Ontario Association of Architects is bringing the 2030 Challenge to Canada with an educational program to assist Ontario’s architecture and construction community in eliminating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through sustainable design.
To help meet the ambitious goals of Architecture 2030, the OAA is partnering with AIA+2030 and offering its members 10 four-hour learning sessions, created to provide specific strategies to becoming carbon-neutral by the year 2030.
The initiative, dubbed OAA+2030 Professional Series, is adopted and updated from the AIA+2030 Professional Series, a partnership between Architecture 2030 and AIA Seattle.
“We are excited to be able to offer such a beneficial and relevant educational series to our members. Carbon neutral building is the way of the future and the OAA is proud to bring the 2030 Challenge to Ontario,” says Bill Birdsell, president of the Ontario Association of Architects.
Sessions run from late January through to the end of October 2014, in both Toronto and Ottawa, and give architects and design professionals the knowledge and leverage to create sustainable next-generation buildings. The comprehensive program is the first of its kind in Canada and covers topics like climate-responsive design, lighting strategies and renewable energy opportunities.
Architecture 2030 is a non-profit, non-partisan and independent organization established in response to climate change. It found buildings to be responsible for approximately half of all US energy consumption and CO2 emissions annually. Its mission is to rapidly transform the built environment from a contributor of GHG emissions to a central part of the solution.
“The 2030 Challenge is not meant to replace any current green building rating system but rather it challenges all systems to a higher level of sustainable achievement,” says Richard Williams, member of the OAA Sustainable Built Environment Committee and Toronto moderator of the OAA+2030 course. “It sets a progressively higher bar for the design and development community to rise toward.”
For more information on the OAA+2030 Professional Education Series, please visit www.oaa.on.ca.