Prolonged and costly power outages rank high among the severe weather risks that Canadians increasingly face. Precarious energy distribution systems, deferred maintenance and communication breakdowns have sometimes exacerbated the turmoil of events like the Alberta floods and southern Ontario ice storm of 2013.

Odds are, an energy reporting requirement for large buildings is coming to Toronto. The question that remains is: Will it come from the city or from the province?

A new energy use analysis tool called ecoMetrics was unveiled at the Canada Green Building Council conference in Vancouver.

The collection, analysis and reporting of energy data is an integral, yet often cumbersome part of building management. As it currently stands, collecting electricity data — and subsequently cleaning, converting and interpreting that data —  from utilities across a variety of jurisdictions in North America is a time and resource-intensive process.

In the big picture, big energy data is projected to simplify the process and expand the scope of audits, benchmarking, measurement and verification. On the ground — as a room full of energy analytics providers and users recently explored — there are still important details to work through.