It is not an exaggeration to call Yuill Herbert of Canada a master of climate adaptation. The head of Sustainability Solutions Group (SSG) has developed climate action plans for 40 communities, including some of Canada’s largest cities, including Toronto and Vancouver.

His latest adventure-a decarbonization strategy for all federal buildings in the National Capital Territory-is a roadmap for a project that could lead to Canada's largest ever large-scale building renovation plan. Think of home renovation 2,200 times, but the scale of each job is thousands of times larger, because the total floor area of ​​these buildings is about 6 million square feet.

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With more than 100,000 civil servants working in these buildings, extensive planning is required to minimize interference.

Herbert's team had many meetings at the beginning.

"We met with 30 government departments, from the secret service to public works, and everyone in between," said Herbert, who spoke of Glasgow's plans at a side event at COP26.

SSG inspected each of the 2,200 federal buildings in the area, including the Gothic Revival Capitol Building built in the mid-1800s and the new LEED standard office buildings that have met energy efficiency standards. It found that it is possible to convert government buildings in the area to net zero emissions.

Herbert said that from 2020 to 2050, the cost of refurbishment could be as high as $25 billion. To be sure, this is a huge public expenditure.

"But it will create a lot of jobs in the process," Herbert said, and provide much-needed impetus to the sluggish post-pandemic economy. The SSG report found that the renovation project will create 46,000 person-years of direct employment and another 22,000 person-years of indirect employment.

Herbert said the government has no choice. "In any case, they have to spend this money because their construction inventory is declining."

The biggest challenge will be to replace the existing gas-fired district heating system. It consists of multiple gas boilers that pump steam through pipes to heat the building. "This system," Herbert said, "it's old.

Switching to electric heat pumps is the most challenging and costly part of the transformation. The SSG report found that attention must be paid to combining electrification with deep energy efficiency retrofits to avoid grid breakdown during peak office hours.

But perhaps the biggest gain of this report is that it can save a lot of money by completing this work in one go.

"The cost of large-scale retrofits reduced the cost of some capital expenditures by 30%," Herbert said.

He added that this is also the only way for the government to achieve its sustainable development goals. The Green Government Strategy of the Finance Committee has an ambitious goal of achieving net zero emissions by 2050, which includes all government-owned and leased property. The report pointed out that this means reducing greenhouse gas emissions as close to zero as possible, and balancing all remaining emissions with the equivalent amount of carbon removal.

Herbert said it usually takes five to eight years to approve this work, because they go through the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Finance. Therefore, the only feasible way to achieve the goal is to complete all the work at once.

Replacing the heating system is far from the only challenge. Thousands of Windows need to be replaced. "We do this at night to keep people where they are," Herbert said.

He added that, just like companies where all employees are used to working from home during the pandemic, the government should first assess how much space they actually need in the future. During the renovation, a plan for working from home can be made for employees.

As for the buildings that may become vacant after the spatial statistics are completed, some people talk about converting them into social housing. But this is another day's project.