Ottawa firm seeks test site for energy-saving system

Ottawa firm seeks test site for energy-saving system

Large building owners might soon have a new option to both lower electricity costs and reduce the space required for electrical infrastructure in their properties. Power Systems Technology in Ottawa is seeking a location to pilot its latest cleantech power solution, which combines two pieces of the company’s existing technology.

Sustainable Biz Canada

What you need to know about Alberta’s carbon levy

Putting a price on carbon is one of the key components of Alberta’s climate leadership plan and represents robust climate policy. But there is significant misunderstanding about how the revenue collected will be used, what the impact on families will be, and how Alberta’s plan will interact with the federal plan to price carbon.

Pembina Institute

Canada & UK launch coal phaseout plan

Canada and the UK have launched the Powering Past Coal Alliance, a collection of 20 countries, six provinces or states, and one city committed to phasing out coal, shifting to cost-competitive renewable energy alternatives, and embracing the health and economic benefits that will result. The Alliance opened with 25 signatories.

Globe-net.com

How will climate change mean for the nation’s capital?

The Ottawa Citizen set out to ask a question to experts in climate, in natural world issues such as forests and farms and lakes, and in human health: What will Ottawa’s local climate be like later in this century as climate change takes its toll? How will our actions today shape our future lives?

Ottawa Citizen

A whole class of carbon emissions we’re totally ignoring

We sometimes refer to the emissions while a building is functioning as the operational carbon, and all the other emissions across its life cycle as the embodied carbon. Focusing on one and not the other is puzzling to say the least – we’re effectively trying to take the carbon out of our energy bills while paying no attention to the carbon in the buildings themselves.

Eco Business

Buildings keep pace in an ever-changing wired world

Visionary architect Mies van der Rohe incorporated state of the art technology into his design for the towers of the Toronto-Dominion Centre 50 years ago. Conduits rising through the walls of the buildings contained wiring for multiline telephones and cable connections for television and radio.

Globe and Mail – Property Biz Canada

Insurers challenged by long series of natural disasters

With its string of hurricanes, floods, and other weather shocks, 2017 may be the most expensive year on record for disaster losses. Hurricane Harvey in Texas alone cost $180 billion, with just $19 billion of that loss insured, said members of ClimateWise, a network of 28 insurance industry organizations.

Christian Science Monitor

	USGBC adopts resilient building standard
	The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has formally adopted RELi, a resilience rating system patterned on LEED, that will soon become a global rating system under the USGBC’s guidance.
	BDC Network, November 20, 2017

 

ABB Campus Montreal LEEDs with Silver

Today ABB is pleased to announce that the Canadian Green Building Council has certified Campus Montreal with the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Silver accreditation. This represents an exceptional standard for a building that houses a range of energy-intensive activities that include manufacturing.

Business Insider

ZAS and Bucholz McEvoy tapped to design TRCA building

ZAS Architects and Bucholz McEvoy Architects have been selected in a joint venture to design the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority’s new Administration Building. The facility will demonstrate TRCA’s commitment to green infrastructure by targeting LEEDv4 Platinum, WELL Silver and is a CaGBC Zero Carbon Building Standard pilot project.

RemiNetwork

The ultra-efficient, hidden heat source for Amazon’s new HQ

Historically speaking, the concept of district heating is far from new — the village of Chaudes-Aigues Cantal in France has been using a geothermal version for centuries. More recently, cities such as Copenhagen and Boston have started using this approach to keep buildings warm in the fall and winter by capturing and converting “recycled” thermal energy generated by other neighborhood systems, such as nearby power plants or waste treatment facilities.  

GreenBiz

The green building blueprints of JPMorgan, Boston Scientific, Salesforce

One of the largest commercial LED lighting installations projects in the world — the retrofit of more than 4,500 JPMorgan Chase branches by General Electric’s energy division, Current — started life as a proposal for a far-more-modest pilot project. But when Mike Norton, global head of property management for the financial services giant, started adding up the potential energy savings, his team suggested moving more quickly.

GreenBiz

A visit to London’s first zero waste store

Bulk opened at the end of August and has been doing a brisk business ever since. The London UK storefront is simple and subtle, with one small sign indicating its name, Bulk, and an attractive window display of fresh pastries, loaves of multigrain bread, and baskets of beautiful produce.

TreeHugger

CRE owners making progress toward water, carbon reduction

Some of the world’s leading commercial real estate owners and managers are making significant progress in reducing water usage, carbon emissions and energy consumption, according to a new report from the Urban Land Institute’s Greenprint Center for Building Performance. Building owners are driving progress as they work to mitigate the risks that come with climate change.

Environmental Leader

UK environment dept. uses 1,400 disposable coffee cups a day

More than 2.5m disposable cups have been purchased by the UK’s environment department for use in its restaurants over the past five years – equivalent to nearly 1,400 a day. The Liberal Democrats’ environment spokesman government“needs to get his own house in order” in light of his public pledges to tackle the growing scourge of plastic pollution.

The Guardian

Indonesia unveils plan to roll out 1,000 eco-mosques by 2020

Worshippers in Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority country, are set to go green with a new initiative that aims to establish 1,000 eco-mosques by 2020. Launched this week by Indonesian Vice President Jusuf Kalla, the initiative will help the mosques to source renewable energy, manage their water and food needs sustainably, reduce and recycle waste and provide environmental education.

Eco Business

	Thank you for not driving: A no-smoking tactic
	If we treated climate change as though it was as bad for us as second-hand smoke, could we convince people to quit internal combustion engines? Simon Dalby ponders.
	Eco Business, November 21, 2017

 

Market Trends and Research

Past climate lessons prompt present rethink

European scientists have just reached two chilling conclusions about today’s Earth by studying past climate lessons. One is that, just as the combustion of fossil fuels is dangerously warming the planet, so too the formation of those fuels turned down the planetary thermostat to deadly levels 300 million years ago.

Globe-net.com

Market trends and research

3C of warming will leave world cities below sea level

Hundreds of millions of urban dwellers around the world face their cities being inundated by rising seawaters if latest UN warnings that the world is on course for 3C of global warming come true.  Famous beaches, commercial districts and swaths of farmland will be threatened at this elevated level of climate change.

The Guardian

Cities and Towns

New campaign launched to rebuild Penn Station

New building technologies might make it cheaper and faster, too. Anyone who has been to Penn Station in New York City knows it to be a horrible place. In 1963 they basically lopped off everything above grade and left the basement. Comparing it to what was lost, historian Vincent Scully wrote: “One entered the city like a god; one scuttles in now like a rat.” Critic Michael Kimmelman wrote:

TreeHugger

Transit, bikes and transportation

Group asks court to halt Montreal light-rail train system

An environmental group is challenging the provincial government in court and alleging Quebec is ramming through the Réseau électrique métropolitain (REM) light-rail train system while attempting to sidestep all sustainable development laws. Superior Court Justice Michel Yergeau is expected to hear arguments on the admissibility of evidence in the case this week.

Montreal Gazette

Toronto transit users love the new pilot project

65,000 daily riders deserved something better. They got it. Twenty years ago, former Mayor Barbara Hall changed the industrial zoning in the “Two Kings” — land that had become mostly parking lots and under-utilized old buildings restricted to industrial uses that had long left the city.

TreeHugger

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