The Toronto Green Standard (TGS) is Toronto’s sustainable design requirements for new private and City-owned developments, which consist of tiers of performance measures with supporting guidelines that promote sustainable site and building design, encourage sustainable design through incentives.

In place since 2009, the TGS addresses city environmental priorities such as improving air quality and reducing the urban heat island effect, reducing energy use and greenhouse gas emissions from new buildings, reducing storm water runoff, protecting and enhancing ecological functions, decreasing building-related bird collisions and diverting household and construction waste from going to landfill sites.

The TGS includes minimum requirements for new buildings as well as a Development Charge incentive stream and more than 4,000 developments have met those requirements, and an average of 13 per cent of residential development applications have participated in the incentive program. By the end of 2025, 125 high performance new developments have been certified through the incentive stream and 26 City-led Net Zero emissions developments are under construction.