Energy-Efficient and Low-Carbon Homes

Dad and daughter playing with dough and laughing while leaning against the kitchen island with white oak cabinets, silver faucet and orchid on the counter

"For me, what’s exciting at Mattamy is we’re learning more about sustainability. We’re learning more each and every day about how we can reduce our carbon footprint and our waste, and we’re coming up with new ways to build and new materials. I’m excited to see where that takes us."

- Esai Williams, New Home Counselor

Raleigh, North Carolina

Mattamy Homes Energy Achievements for FY2024

Our Carbon Focus

Mattamy is committed to building sustainable homes for current and future generations. We consider every aspect of homebuilding – from the products we use to how we approach construction, finishing, heating, cooling and lighting, and even down to the plants we select for landscaping – from the perspective of reducing GHG emissions from our activities. We are dedicated to enhancing the way we measure and understand our homes’ whole building life cycle, which, in turn, will enable us to implement our GHG emissions reduction strategy successfully.

UNDERSTANDING GHG EMISSIONS SCOPE 1, 2 AND 3

Scope 1:

Direct GHG emissions from sources owned or controlled by Mattamy (e.g., fuels we purchase for our vehicle fleet or to warm homes under construction in the winter months).
Scope 2:

Indirect GHG emissions from electricity, steam, heating and cooling purchased by Mattamy (e.g., electricity used for our offices, sales centres and construction site trailers).
Scope 3:

GHG emissions that result from our activities but occur from sources not owned or controlled by Mattamy (e.g., our homes’ long-term operation, purchased goods and air travel).

Blue pie chart showing Mattamy's Total GHG Emissions in Tonnes CO2e including Scope 1, Scope 2 and Scope 3 emissions. Scope 1: 13,591 (<1%), Scope 2: 994 (<1%) and Scope 3 including operational, embodied and other carbon: 1,393,598 (99%).

Infographic showing the Whole Lifecycle Product Stage for a home including Product Stage, In-Use Stage and End-of-Life Stage. Product Stage: Emissions generated by creating and transporting materials used in building a home and the subsequent construction. In-use stage: Emissions created by all the activities associated with home life. End-of-life stage: Emissions produced by deconstructing a home and material disposal. With 20% Scope 3 embodied carbon at the Product STage and 79% Scope 3 operational carbon at the in-use stage.

Setting Our Decarbonization Targets

Mattamy wants to lead the homebuilding industry in carbon reduction, and we believe that realistic and affordable reduction targets will encourage our peers to follow our example.

We have put tremendous effort into setting these targets, with input from across our organization. This is an essential step toward realizing our long-term carbon-reduction ambitions, and we are committed to sharing our results and experiences with our peers and reporting on our progress against these targets going forward.

Knowing that we operate across various regions, our initial steps in setting decarbonization targets started from the “bottom up.” They included developing meaningful and fully costed strategies tailored to local building codes, emissions factors and climate zones. We introduced the concept of cost per reduced tonne of CO₂e, which helps ensure our strategies make financial sense and provide cost-effective strategies that our peers can adopt.

Mattamy has committed to achieving a 10% GHG reduction in our FY2025 sold homes as compared to code-built homes,¹ which is considered a 31% reduction from a typical resale home built in 2005/2006.

By setting near-term targets, we aim to drive action and deliver immediate results.

We are committed to reporting against these results in 2025.

Evaluating Our Impact

To ensure we continually progress toward achieving our GHG emissions reduction goals, we need to know where we are at any given point.

ARCHETYPE MODELLING

We chose a set of archetype homes, guided by consultations with building science experts, to represent our various low-rise divisions, which encompass detached single-family homes and attached townhomes. We assessed the archetypes using energy modelling and embodied carbon calculators to establish baselines for both GHG emissions and energy consumption. We undertook a similar assessment for our urban structures, though in this case the findings were based on actual buildings rather than archetypes.

GHG EMISSIONS INTENSITY

Using the homes we build as the starting point, we consider GHG emissions from multiple perspectives. GHG emissions intensity is one metric that we use to assess our homes across different built forms. It’s a simple calculation that takes our total GHG emissions (i.e., operational and embodied carbon) and divides it by the homes’ square feet or square metres (kgCO₂e/sq. ft. or kgCO₂e/sq. m). This metric captures product design and efficiency, material choices and geographical impacts, and, with this data, we are better informed to formulate our decarbonization strategy.

¹A code-built home is a home that is projected to only meet the minimum requirements to be code compliant with the municipal, provincial, state or national requirements for a home to receive an occupancy permit.