Commercial and Institutional Consumption of Energy Survey (CICES), December 2005

PDF Version Table of ContentsNext Page

Previous surveys in the commercial/institutional sector

Since 2000, the OEE has completed a variety of initiatives designed to gather data on energy use in the commercial/institutional sector.

• The Commercial and Institutional Building Energy Use Survey (CIBEUS) was carried out using 2000 data. This survey – the first of its kind in Canada – gathered data on energy consumption, energy intensity and the physical and energy-efficient characteristics of commercial and institutional buildings. The target population for CIBEUS included buildings with a surface area of at least 92 m². The buildings had to be in a large Canadian city, that is, a census metropolitan area or a census agglomeration of at least 175 000 residents. (The latter threshold was lowered to 50 000 residents for the Atlantic provinces.) Overall, the energy intensity of the buildings in the CIBEUS target population was 1.59 GJ/m² in 2000.
  
  
• In 2004, the first Consumption of Energy Survey (CES) was completed based on 2003 data, and its target population included only universities, colleges and hospitals. This survey constituted a census of each of these three sectors in Canada. Contrary to CIBEUS, no census agglomeration was excluded from the survey design. CES was based on the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), while CIBEUS defined its own building categories. In 2003, the energy intensity of universities was 2.04 GJ/m², that of colleges was 1.48 GJ/m², and that of hospitals was 2.65 GJ/m².
  
  
• Every year the OEE publishes an Energy Use Data Handbook. It provides, among other things, energy consumption data by type of activity for the commercial and institutional sector, and data on different indicators that affect energy consumption. These data are gathered from various information sources and surveys, most notably from Statistics Canada and Natural Resources Canada.
  
  
• The OEE has also published sectoral studies based on comparative analyses, through the Energy Innovators Initiative of its Buildings Division. This initiative has recently been renamed EnerGuide for Existing Buildings (EEB). The studies have centred on, amongst others, the hospitality sector, the retail trade sector and shopping malls. Owners of commercial buildings can use the studies to compare their facility's energy consumption with that of similar facilities. To learn more about how you can call on the OEE's services and financial incentives to reduce your energy consumption, please consult the following Web site: oee.nrcan.gc.ca/commercial.

All these surveys, handbooks and studies are fundamentally different in that there are important conceptual differences among them. Caution must therefore be exercised when directly comparing data from these sources.

Previous Page | Table of Contents | Next Page