Mississauga will consider a new building standard that may cost more upfront but city staff hope will reduce carbon and lead the way for future green development in the city.

The proposed Green Building Standard would succeed LEED Silver certification as the status quo for environmentally-friendly construction by the city, and boost minimum requirements for air tightness, energy use and emissions as well as performance monitoring.

“We're looking to raise the bar and LEED Silver. Our existing standard just wasn't getting us there so we had to increase those requirements,” said Sumeet Jhingan, project manager with the city’s energy management team.

According to a city staff report, if the proposed standard were applied to the Meadowvale Community Centre, which was reopened in 2016, the building would produce 4 to 82 per cent lower greenhouse gasses and save between 1 and 10 per cent on utility costs.

The catch is higher upfront costs than the LEED standard -- between 2.6 and 40 per cent higher -- which the city aims to recover through savings on utilities and reduced maintenance expense.

For the Meadowvale Community Centre, the projected cost increase would be between $500,000 and $3.6 million, according to a city staff report.

Daniela Paraschiv, manager on the city’s energy management team, said the higher upfront costs don’t need to be “scary” for residents. Cost savings, she said, would come in part from the simpler systems in green buildings that are easier to operate and require less maintenance.

The proposed standard comes as Mississauga targets a 40 per cent greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction from 1990 levels by 2030 and 80 per cent by 2050 as part of its forthcoming Climate Change Action plan.

Jhingan said that if the new standard was adopted, there would be a small overall impact in reducing greenhouse gases for newly constructed and renovated city buildings. But the higher standard, he said, would help encourage the private sector to build similar buildings.

“What it does allow is if we can show that these buildings can be built in a financially sustainable way, and obviously an environmentally and socially responsible way, then we've provided that case, that example, to the private sector,” he said.