Practice and inspiration of zero carbon buildings in Canada

Carbon emissions in the building sector account for a relatively large share of society’s overall carbon emissions. Implicit carbon emissions of buildings (mainly from building materials) and operational carbon emissions of buildings (mainly from operational energy consumption) are the two most important parts of carbon emissions in the whole life cycle of buildings. The research and practice of zero carbon buildings can help accelerate the in-depth promotion of carbon emission reduction in the building sector, and work on both building material carbon emissions and operational carbon emissions to promote buildings from zero carbon emissions in the operational phase to zero carbon emissions in the whole life cycle, and then to promote the goal of zero carbon emissions from individual buildings to the whole. Through the analysis of Canadian zero carbon building design evaluation standards and operation evaluation standards, as well as the introduction of actual evaluation projects, combined with the preparation and implementation of the current building energy efficiency and green building standards in China, this paper compares the similarities and differences between China and Canada in terms of building carbon emission calculation, building carbon neutral basis, building carbon offset measures, zero carbon target implementation path and key evaluation indexes, and proposes the approaches that can be adopted and the issues that should be noted in Chinese green building projects for zero carbon design and operation.