and published its final report and recommendations, including adoption of a Step Code into a voluntary provincial regulation. The Energy Step Code Council In mid 2017, the province renamed the group the Energy Step Code Council, and mandated it "to support local governments and industry towards smooth uptake of the BC Energy Step Code and help guide market transformation towards higher-performance buildings within B.C." The Energy Step Code Council meets quarterly to support training and capacity building opportunities for local governments, industry, and other stakeholder, communicate what the BC Energy Step Code is and how it may be implemented across the province, and provide advice and clarification on technical aspects of the standard. Cost implications of adoption In September 2017, BC Housing, the province's housing authority, and the Energy Step Code Council published the BC Energy Step Code 2017 Metrics Research Study as a comprehensive exploration of the standard's energy, emissions and economic impacts. The research is based on data generated by builders from all across British Columbia, and bills itself as "one of the most extensive energy analyses of buildings in Canada." The researchers conclude that meeting the requirements of the Lower Steps of the BC Energy Step Code involve only very modest construction premiums. In most situations, builders can achieve the Lower Steps for less than a 2% construction cost premium above that of a home built to the requirements of the BC Building Code. The construction cost premiums associated with meeting the requirements of Step 1 amounts to just a small fraction of a percent, the report states. In exchange, owners, occupants, and others would enjoy the benefits detailed in the "Benefits of adoption" section below. In an effort to illustrate how the BC Energy Step Code would impact construction costs in the "real world," the study's authors produced a series of hypothetical scenarios for various building types in various cities. For an apartment in a six-storey building The Metrics Research report offers an example of the anticipated capital construction cost premium for a hypothetical 730 square foot unit in a six-storey apartment building in Surrey, British Columbia. Units in this hypothetical new building would sell for between CAD$270,000 and CAD$730,000. For this building, the report says meeting the requirements of Step 1 would involve a construction cost premium of CAD$100 per unit above the cost of building to the standard modelling requirements of the BC Building