Office decommissioning: Landfill or recycle and reuse?

Office decommissioning: Landfill or recycle and reuse?

Office decommissioning has the potential to generate huge amounts of waste — or to recycle and divert potential waste from landfills while investing in the community.  Calgary-based energy company Enbridge chose the later partnering with Green Standards on a renovation project.

Environmental Leader

GM, Johnson Controls teach G7 about circular economy

When finance ministers from the G7 took up the circular economy in recent months, the concept has some economic heft. Given that more than half of all raw material inputs to industry wind up as waste in a year’s time, and given that those inputs are on a trajectory to grow 35 percent in the next 15 years, it’s clearly important.

Green Biz

CSA Group announces first EPD

The CSA Group has announced the registration of its first environmental product declaration (EPD) by the Cement Association of Canada for general use and portland-limestone cements. EPDs provide a standard way to communicate the environmental impact of available products and as such are an important part of the life cycle assessment of a building.

World Cement

GRESB launches health & well-being module

GRESB, the global standard for environmental, social and governance (ESG) assessment of real estate portfolios and infrastructure assets, today announced the launch of the GRESB Health and Well-being Module. This new module is an optional supplement to the GRESB Real Estate Assessment.

Canada Green Building Council

Vancouver multi-unit residential passive house design

A team of building design experts have designed an ultra-energy efficient and adaptable mixed-use residential building concept that can be swiftly constructed using prefabricated construction techniques. The four- to six-storey concept focuses on contemporary residential buildings aiming to meet the international Passive House Energy Standard.

WireService.ca

Multifamily wood prefabs in Sweden to dream about

There are a few things we obsess about on TreeHugger, including modular prefabrication, tall wood construction and digital design. One doesn’t usually find them all in one place in North America, but in Sweden, it’s almost the standard. Lindbäcks, a 90 year old company in northern Sweden, is truly taking modular construction to new heights.

TreeHugger

Dysfunction by design: How standards hurt buildings

Personal heaters are a summer survival tool for many office workers chilled to the bone by hyperactive ventilation systems — an act of self-defense against an epidemic of overcooling that is wasting energy and confounding comfort in not only offices but also large shops, schools and other buildings.

Green Biz

Can commercial buildings become more locally comfortable?

Most commercial buildings suffer from a fundamental flaw: the building is the focus rather than the people inside of it. The elements that make a building comfortable, such as lighting and heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC), are often designed to maintain an occupiable space regardless of the occupants. 

Energy Manager Today

Taking the temperature

Stuart Lombard had no obvious reason to leave his job as a venture capitalist in 2007. Times were good. As managing partner with J.L. Albright Venture Partners in Toronto, he worked out of a swank office on the 44th floor of Brookfield Place, at the time known as BCE Place.

Corporate Knights

Moving from green cleaning to cleaning sustainability

For those that may have missed it, the $50 billion-plus professional cleaning industry has become one of the “greenest” industries in the U.S.  Once viewed as a fad, environmentally preferable “green” cleaning solutions, tools, and equipment are now widely manufactured and used in facilities throughout the country. 

Environmental Leader

The green datacenter revolution and your website

When you hire a company to host your website, you’re basically paying that company to arrange for the code to your website to made available to computers around the world, 24/7/365.  That company may store and run that code on its own computer or rent that computer space from another company. 

Energy Manager Today

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Intensification nation

Vancouver these days has become a city fixated by the curbside view of its gold-plated residential real estate. As the city obsesses over stratospheric house prices, media accounts of shacks selling for seven figures and real estate industry scandals, British Columbia’s mega-city seems to have become a place beyond reach.

Corporate Knights

City Hall as ground zero for carbon emission reduction

Global climate conferences may be the ultimate stage for nation-to-nation negotiations, but municipal leaders see City Hall as ground zero in the effort to reduce carbon emissions and creatively adapt to a changing climate. I am convinced that our people want clean air,” declared the mayor of Pittsburgh in his inaugural speech. 

U.S. Green Building Council

Is Energy Efficiency the path to a lower carbon economy?

Energy efficiency − the drive to get more bang from each buck spent on power. If the European Union member states adopt a 40% energy efficiency target, the sum of energy savings and power from renewable sources such as wind and photovoltaics together would overtake the sum of all imported coal, oil and gas by 2030.

Globe-net.com

BIM ‘becoming the norm’ in facilities management

Facilities managers must get “on board” with building information modeling (BIM) and realize its benefits or else they risk “falling into a ‘death valley of know-how’ in terms of the loss of valuable information and realizing BIMs potential added value,” according to a facilities management event speaker.

Environmental Leader

Market trends and research

The growing commercial, industrial energy storage market

The commercial and industrial (C&I) energy storage market in the United States, led by California, is growing, according to Navigant Research.  The firm predicts that the sector will grow from $968.4 million this year to $10.8 billion in 2025. Capacity will expand from 499.4 MW this year to 9.1 GW by the end of the study period.

Energy Manager

World green building trends in 2016: Motivators and obstacles

New data reveals that client demand is the top trigger for green building activity, having grown from 35 percent in 2012 to 40 percent in 2015. This shows that building owners recognize the benefits of green, and this recognition is a major driver of green market growth globally.

U.S. Green Building Council

The ‘burbs are back

It has been standard TreeHugger trope that the suburbs are dying and all the smart young people want to live downtown and raise little Ginny in a condo on the city instead of a house in the ‘burbs. But now economist Jed Kolko crunches the latest census data and finds that is not exactly the case.

TreeHugger

Commercial real estate

Atlanta Airport earns ISO certification

The Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta is the first in the United States to earn ISO 50001:2011 certification, according to AECOM. The certification is awarded for creating a “systematic framework to manage energy performance and drive continual improvement.”

Energy Manager Today

Geothermally heated French resort to open in 2017

Next spring, 14 years after being conceived by Pierre & Vacances Center Parcs and Euro Disney, Villages Nature Paris will open 20 miles east of Paris. The resort will be a showcase for green design, geothermal technology and will be based on harmony between man and nature.

Green Lodging News

Residential Real Estate

Mattamy Homes nominated as Alberta Emerald Awards finalist

Mattamy Homes, North America’s largest privately owned homebuilder, was one of three finalists named in the Large Business category (100 employees or more) Emerald Awards for their recent ecoII Net Zero Energy Homes Community project in Calgary’s own Cityscape community.

Windsor Star

Dutch family’s experimental urban greenhouse home

People living in northern climes don’t have the year-round greenery that people living in the tropics can enjoy. Unless they live in a greenhouse, that is. While taking up residence in a structure meant for plants may initially sound like a wacky idea, some are experimenting with it as a sustainable and energy-efficient option.

TreeHugger

Green building ratings

GBCA partners with International WELL Building Institute

The Green Building Council of Australia has used the Green Cities conference to announce a partnership with the International WELL Building Institute. The two bodies have signed a memorandum of understanding, agreeing to “work collaboratively to promote health and wellbeing in the design, construction and operations of buildings, fitouts and communities in Australia”.

Eco Business

BOMA Earns ENERGY STAR Designation

The Buildings Owners and Managers Association International (BOMA) has been awarded a 2016 ENERGY STAR Partner of the Year Sustained Excellence award for programs and improvements that increase energy efficiency.  The EPA designation is the 9^th earned by BOMA, which is the only commercial real estate association to have been honored.

Buildings.com

Sustainable products & materials

Generating energy from wastewater and wewage generating interest

The idea of using wastewater and/or sewage to provide energy is heating up, both literally and figuratively.  The basic idea is straight forward: Lots of the water that goes down the drain is hot. Every bit that is harvested and put to use is a bit that need not be generated.

Energy Manager Today

Government Programs and Incentives

The Government of Canada investment in Parks Canada’s historic canals in Quebec

The Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Catherine McKenna, today announced an investment of more than $170 million to protect and preserve Parks Canada’s five historic canals in Quebec.  Canada’s National Parks are a vital part of who we are as a country – they bring our communities together and represent our shared heritage.

Montreal Gazette

CaGBC commends Federal Government climate leadership in Budget 2016

The CaGBC commends Canada’s Federal Government for showing strong leadership on climate change mitigation through key investments that were announced on March 22 in the 2016 Federal Budget. The CaGBC is pleased a significant investment of $2.1 billion towards repairs and retrofits to its wide range of properties and buildings in the National Capital Region.

Canada Green Building Council

Corporate Sustainability

GRI launches GOLD community

GRI has launched a new membership and engagement program, the GRI GOLD Community, building on its collaborative, global multi-stakeholder network. The GRI GOLD Community consists of diverse companies and organizations united in the belief that greater transparency is a catalyst for change towards a more sustainable economy and world.

Green Lodging News

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