Ford’s new HQ, the future of sustainable facilities?

Ford’s new HQ, the future of sustainable facilities?

Ford plans to transform its 60-plus-year-old Deadborn campus into a high-tech, high-efficiency headquarters a project will take 10 years to complete and cost upwards of $1.2 billion. It includes buildings that will reduce water and energy use by 50 percent, driverless cars and eBikes to transport employees, onsite gardens to grow food and composting toilets, among many other sustainable features.

Environmental Leader – Fortune.com – New York Times

Old Edmonton airport green development struggling to take off

In 2013 the final runway was closed for good officially ending a contentious debate about the airport’s future. Eventually the pitch for turning the landmark into North America’s greenest community – 30,000 people living and working in a carbon-neutral neighbourhood – won over the public and opened a new chapter for the sprawling oil city.

Globe and Mail

Morguard sustainability report shows increased efficiency

Morguard Corporation continued to make improvements in its environmental, social and governance indicators in 2015, according to its recently released “Focusing on Sustainability” report. Energy efficiency gains alone is equivalent to the power required for thousands of homes.

Read more

Water management takes smart buildings to the next level

Water is increasingly affecting companies’ bottom lines, making water management no longer a choice for environmental managers.  An Ecova survey of more than 700 energy, facility, finance and sustainability professionals across North America found water conservation is a business imperative.

Environmental Leader

Data centres: The new cool kids on the block?

Data centres power the modern economy and keep the world’s largest businesses, websites and services running, but in doing so they are also the biggest guzzlers of energy worldwide. The industry is applying new business models and technologies to change that.

Eco Business

Meet Microsoft’s new data center sustainability chief

Microsoft has big plans for cloud computing. It wants to build “the most hyperscale public cloud that operates around the world in more regions than anyone else,” which involves big investments in data centers — and has the potential to exponentially grow Microsoft’s carbon and water footprints.

Environmental Leader

DOE’s building energy asset score platform

A full-blown building energy assessment can lead to great savings. However, the assessment itself is a costly affair. The DOE’s Building Energy Asset Score is a less expensive – as in free – approach that provides usable and relevant data that points management toward steps that should be taken. Two versions of the platform now are available.

Energy Manager – Energy Manager Today

The sustainability culture shift: 8 steps for success

As Ontario’s new cap and trade legislation engages in public consultation, and with the recent announcement of up to $2 billion in the Canadian federal budget for “projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve the environmental sustainability,” organizations are scrambling to determine their carbon emissions, and, more importantly, how they will reduce their associated impact.

BDC Network

Bullfrog Power launches co-op solar project

Bullfrog Power, a leading green energy provider, along with Solshare Energy, recently celebrated and officially launched B.C.’s first co-operatively owned community solar project. The project, situated on the rooftop of the east Vancouver’s first co-housing site, is a 23-kW photovoltaic plant, which has been generating clean, pollution-free, electricity since January.

Daily Commercial News

Vancouver development worries solar power seller

When Bryan Ward checked on his solar panels one day last week, he discovered someone had tried, and failed, to steal them from the roof of his Studio 31. It was just the latest mishap in a saga that involves his solar panels, Vancouver City Hall and the greenest sound studio in Canada.

Vancouver Province

Canada’s greenest post-secondary building for 2016

After becoming the first building of its size in the region to receive LEED Platinum certification, The Jim Pattison Centre of Excellence in Sustainable Building Technologies and Renewable Energy Conservation has been named the most sustainable post-secondary building in the country. 

Okanagan College

Alberta homeowners warm to geothermal technology

When Dutch engineer Koen van der Maaten moved to Calgary 10 years ago, he thought he’d found the perfect base from which to establish a geo-exchange design and installation company.  A decade on and, while Albertans have proved “slow to adopt” the idea of exchanging energy with the earth, Mr. van der Maaten believes things could be about to change.

Globe and Mail

USGBC addresses responsible forest management

The U.S. Green Building Council’s quarterly addenda to the LEED green building rating system, which includes a new pilot Alternative Compliance Path (ACP) credit that is designed to further advance environmentally responsible forest management and help rid buildings of illegal wood.

Green Lodging News – BDC Network – TreeHugger

AIA report analyzes 20 years of the best green projects

Each year, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) selects the ten best green buildings. Since this will be the report’s 20th year, the organization has published Lessons from the Leading Edge, a study of the 200 Committee on the Environment (COTE) Top Ten Award winning projects since 1997. 

BDC Network

Can you power a business on 100% renewable energy?

In 2012, Ikea made headlines with its pledge to completely power its stores with renewable energy by 2020. Last week, HP, the US-based multinational IT company, made the same pledge, promising to switch completely to renewables by 2020. The fact that both Ikea and HP set the same deadline for renewables illustrates a stunning change in renewable power generation. 

Ceres

Market trends and research

The hidden health benefits of green buildings

The green building movement can unlock a huge amount of economic and social benefits if it focuses on making buildings healthier for occupants in addition to environmental aspects, said experts at the Green Cities conference in Sydney.

Eco Business

Green venue report launches third annual worldwide survey

Green Venue Report, a leading group of event industry professionals committed to the advancement of venue sustainability, announces the launch of the third annual survey to compare sustainability practices and performance across convention and exhibition centers worldwide.

Green Lodging News

Almost half of natural World Heritage sites under threat

Are economic growth and environmental conservation mutually exclusive?  Not at all, says a new report on United Nations World Heritage sites commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). On the contrary, healthy environments often boost local economies, meaning that industrial expansion in natural heritage sites is a threat to those who live there, too.

Christian Science Monitor

Prairie farmers well-placed to adapt to climate change

Prairie farmers in Canada are better-positioned than some global counterparts to adapt to the realities of climate change, says a University of Regina professor. David Sauchyn, senior research scientist at the Prairie Adaptation Research Collaborative, is poised to speak  will speak at Adaptation Canada 2016 in Ottawa this week.

The Star Phoenix

Commercial real estate

Dalhousie building names one of Canada’s greenest

Dalhousie’s Mona Campbell Building is so green it’s bronze.  The Studley Campus facility, first opened in 2010, earned third-place honours in the “university and college buildings” category in a new ranking of Canada’s top 12 green buildings from Corporate Knights.

Dalhousie University

Berkeley’s journey from revolution to resilience

It’s a sunny morning in Berkeley, California and the topics of the day are “co-benefits,” cohesion and connectedness. Not a sociology class at the nearby University of California or a meeting of a local co-op, but rather a briefing on how the city plans to brace itself for climate change, the next big Bay Area earthquake and nagging social conflicts.

GreenBiz

What went wrong at Saskatchewan’s Eco-Centre?

Brent Kreuger stands at the edge of his field and looks out at the charred remains of the Eco-Centre. The 6,000-square-foot building featured straw bale insulation, wood from local elevators, solar power, recycled water and waste composting. When it opened in 2004, it was promoted as a sustainable way to revitalize rural Saskatchewan. 

Saskatoon StarPhoenix

Holiday Inn Club Vacations partners with Clean the World

The Holiday Inn Club Vacations brand, developed and exclusively operated by Orange Lake Holdings, announced a partnership with Clean The World to recycle partially-used soaps and bottled hygiene products from its resorts. This new partnership continues the company’s sustainability efforts through the IHG Green Engage program.

Green Lodging News

LEED Platinum Moon Resort a Canadian initiative

Moon World Resorts Inc. (MWR), a Canadian architectural design, intellectual property developer and licensor, has revealed its plans for MOON USA. The project will rise in the City of Coachella, situated in California’s Coachella Valley. Triangulated between Los Angeles and San Diego, the Coachella Valley already welcomes some 12 million annual visitors.

Green Lodging News

Grand staircase being built in Rotterdam

Your vertical transportation correspondent took a lot of heat from readers recently for calling Montreal’s iconic twisty stairs “deathtraps.” I was actually being facetious; at TreeHugger we are big fans of stairs. So of course we love this giant stair being built up the side of a building in Rotterdam by MVRDV. 

TreeHugger

Residential Real Estate

Toyota’s housing division rolls out a hydrogen community

Everyone knows Toyota makes cars, but it is also a big builder of prefabricated homes in Japan. Now that they are pushing their new Mirai hydrogen car and rolling out filling stations, it only makes sense that they should also roll out hydrogen powered houses and built hydrogen powered communities.

TreeHugger

It’s time to bring back the Euroloaf

In the 1970s a remarkable housing project was built in Toronto; The St. Lawrence neighbourhood has been described by journalist Dave LeBlanc as the “best example of a mixed-income, mixed-use, pedestrian-friendly, sensitively scaled, densely populated community ever built in the province”.  It was a mix of low street facing townhouses and long mid-rise apartment blocks of a relatively consistent height. 

TreeHugger

A passive house that saves BTUs and is beautiful

There are a lot of architects and designers who are not crazy about the Passivhaus or Passive House concept. It’s based on hitting difficult targets of energy consumption and air leakage that some consider arbitrary. Others complain that they are stuffy inside, that windows are a problem, and that they are often ugly.

TreeHugger

Green building ratings

New LEED 2009 projects to meet increased minimum energy performance

The U.S. Green Building Council recently announced that all new projects registering for LEED 2009 beginning on April 8, 2016 will need to satisfy increased minimum energy performance thresholds.  Projects must now earn a minimum of four points in the Energy Performance credits.

BDC Network

Sustainable products & materials

‘Smart’ cement aims to extend lifespan of buildings

Scientists at the University of Victoria led by Civil Engineering Prof. Rishi Gupta are working to cement their lead in making so-called smart concrete that heals and seals cracks, greatly reducing potential infrastructure disasters and extending lifespans of buildings and structures. 

CBC

Lighting requirements for high-rise dwellings proposed for energy standard

A proposal to set lighting requirements for high-rise dwellings in the energy standard published by ASHRAE and the Illuminating Engineering Society (IES) is open for industry comment.  Fourteen addenda to ANSI/ASHRAE/IES Standard 90.1-2013, Energy Standard for Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings, are open for public comment from March 25 until April 24, 2016.

BDC Network

Government Programs and Incentives

G20 prioritizes energy efficiency plan

Adopted in November 2014, the G20 Energy Efficiency Action Plan has been successfully implemented for its first year in 2015.  It is a voluntary collaboration among G20 countries with six individual work streams that will share best practices and technical resources one of which is buildings.

Clean Energy Finance Forum

How to manage carbon emissions and policy

Carbon pricing, in the form of a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system, is used by businesses and governments all over the world to cut greenhouse gas emissions and, according to proponents, grow the economy.  Critics say the opposite is true, but more on that later.

Environmental Leader

Corporate Sustainability

Port Metro Vancouver recognized as sustainability leader

For the third year in a row, Port Metro Vancouver has been ranked among Corporate Knights’ 2016 Future 40 Responsible Corporate Leaders in Canada. The methodology for the ranking takes into account 12 key performance indicators covering management of resources, employees and finances.

Globe-net.com

Cities and Towns

Paris as resilience innovator

For centuries, the world has looked to Paris to be inspired. As the birthplace of many revolutions — in the arts, politics, philosophy and urbanism — it is only appropriate that Paris will also be at the vanguard of the next revolution: the resilience revolution.

Green Biz

How coastal cities can learn resilience tactics from nature

Flooding, storm surge, and sea level rise are serious threats to natural resources, infrastructure, and human communities in coastal areas.  In effort to adapt to these changing conditions, planners and policymakers should consider nature’s strategies when developing coastal resiliency plans to protect communities from increasing coastal erosion and flooding due to rising sea levels.

Green Biz

Transit, bikes and transportation

Vancouver businesses against proposed bike lane

The City of Vancouver’s plans to build a bike lane on Commercial Drive is irking businesses along the busy shopping and eating area. The lane was one of 12 the city approved in December to be built in the next five years. “. . . Even the buses have a hard time with parking and pedestrians,” said business owner Lena Demetrioff.

CBC News – Vancouver Sun

Waste Management

Great buildings that were stupidly demolished

It’s been said that the greenest building is the one already standing; Steve Mouzon adapted it to The greenest brick is the one already in the wall. In one of my many defences of Brutalist architecture I have paraphrased it as the greenest concrete is the stuff that’s already poured.

TreeHugger

Sustainable Biz News