Last week the Stok team joined leaders across the green building industry in Vancouver for the Canada Green Building Council’s Building Lasting Change conference, which marked the official launch of LEED v5 in Canada. Here are some highlights we heard—and why we think LEED v5 is well-positioned to address the needs of the market and advance sustainable buildings across Canada.

The industry’s go-to energy benchmarking tool may soon go dark—what now?
ENERGY STAR® Portfolio Manager is at risk of being phased out due to a proposed cut in funding for the EPA program within the Trump administration’s FY-2026 budget. The program could be eliminated as early as October 1, 2025. Nothing is final yet; however, it’s not too early to prepare.

AI touches every corner of our lives—from streaming your favorite show, to suggesting that funny meme, to protecting your home via your security system. Despite all these benefits, AI has one big problem: heat.

The explosive rise of AI has pushed U.S. data center electricity use from less than 2% of the grid in 2018 to projections as high as 12% by 2028. And with electricity consumption comes heat; cooling usually accounts for more than 10% of that load.

In April 2025, Stok received confirmation from the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) that our targets were approved under the SBTi’s Small and Medium Enterprises Criteria (v1.0). With this validation, SBTi confirms that Stok’s targets are aligned with the ambition to limit global temperature rise to 1.5° Celsius, guiding our decarbonization efforts toward data-driven impact.

We’re proud to launch the Indigenized Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) Guidebook, co-developed by Dennis Thomas-Whonoak (Kwasen Enterprises), Stephani Carter (Stok),