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Edmonton’s first LEED Gold multires project

2 years ago

Real estate investment firm One Properties has announced that its Southpark on Whyte in Edmonton has become the city’s first LEED Gold-certified multifamily development.

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Last fall, CRE gave itself a pat on the back for being environmentally and socially responsible. When a referee for ESG investing issued its annual scores, companies including Ivanhoé Cambridge, Prologis and Vornado Realty Trust they highlighted their improvements.

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A Burnaby facility that turns waste into energy will soon be powering an entire Vancouver neighbourhood. A new agreement with Metro Vancouver will see River District Energy purchase up to 10 megawatts of heat from Burnaby’s Waste-to-Energy Facility starting in 2025.

As part of Canada’s goal to hit net-zero emissions by 2050, the federal government has released a report stating it’s on track to reduce methane emissions from the oil and gas sector by its target of 40 to 45 per cent by 2025.

Social Purpose Real Estate Financing

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If 2021 was the year when floods, wildfires and heatwaves made impacts of climate change impossible to ignore, 2022 is supposed to be when this country gets serious about building resilience with the release of  Canada’s first-ever National Adaptation Strategy.

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Head of Canada’s banking regulator says he’s looking to increase in 2022 how much capital banks need to hold to protect against climate change risks, to increase resilience to both the physical risks and the risks shifting to a net-zero economy.

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A report from C40 Cities, Arup, and the University of Leeds discussed how we have to cut emissions by dealing with consumption and not production. The concept has been reframed as a movement where you Take The JUMP.

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The Competition Bureau says Keurig Canada has agreed to pay a $3 million penalty for making false or misleading claims that its single-use K-Cup pods are recyclable that include a fine, the bureau’s expenses and an $800,000 donation to an environmental charity.

Decarbonizing Canada’s Large Buildings

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Not long ago the world was outraged over plastic drinking straws and bags, mostly, but also the entire plastics and packaging industries. It was a war on plastic that seemed like it might curb plastic’s environmental excesses. That was so 2018.

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In January 2018 after handling nearly half of the world’s recyclable waste for decades, China banned the import of most plastics and paper from other countries, primarily the U.S. and Europe, sending the global recycling market into a tailspin.

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Although the footprint of Toronto’s new Cherry Street Stormwater Management Facility may be small, the challenges were complex for Graham Construction when it came to incorporating the latest technology and innovative processes.

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In 2018, Canada’s mining, quarrying and oil and gas extraction sectors were among the largest drivers behind the national wage gap, responsible for 6.7 per cent of the discrepancy between men and women according to Statistics Canada, particularly in Alberta’s energy sector.

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Ottawa is finally addressing one of the biggest inequities of its carbon pricing scheme by establishing rebates for farmers. Prairie grain farmers have long complained about the added costs of carbon pricing incurred from burning natural gas to dry crops.

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The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority has been mandated to develop a program to support locally owned microgrids that use green hydrogen fuel cells. The microgrids will be designed to replace backup generators that pollute neighborhoods.

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Backup generator use has increased in the San Francisco Bay Area by 34 per cent over the last three years according to M. Cubed research. They equate to 15 per cent of California’s electric capacity and 90 per cent use carbon-intensive diesel fuel.

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General Motors agreed to recognize California’s authority to set vehicle emission standards under the Clean Air Act making the Detroit automaker eligible for state fleet purchases. This follows a previous announcement by California to halt purchases from GM.

Energy Profiles

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Wholesale prices for electricity rose in 2021 over the previous year because of increased costs of power generation fuels, such as natural gas, and volatility created by natural events like the February winter storm in Texas.

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Marked by devastating hurricanes and cold snaps in the United States, 2021 proved the second-most costly year on record for the world’s insurers at $120 billion according to Munich Re warning that extreme weather was more likely with climate change.

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Levels of planet-warming carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere hit record highs in 2021, which was one of the world’s hottest years ever, the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service said. The last seven years were the world’s warmest on record.

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The world will probably have one of the warmest years on record in 2022, underscoring the need to tackle climate change.  The average global temperature is anticipated to be about 1.09 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels said the U.K’s Meteorological Office.

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