Green roof revolution taking root in Canada

Green roof revolution taking root in Canada

When the Montreal borough of St-Laurent asked grocer Richard Duchemin to install a green roof on top of half of his new IGA grocery, he decided to take things a step further – he installed a 25,000 square foot urban farm above his store. His urban rooftop farm is believed to be the first of its kind for a Canadian grocer.

Sustainable Biz Canada

PSPC rolling out Smart Buildings technology nationally

After a successful pilot project, Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) will implement its Smart Buildings initiative to lower energy costs and greenhouse gas emissions in up to 100 buildings across Canada over the next three years. As part of PSPC’s pilot project, the Smart Buildings technology has been installed in 13 PSPC buildings in the National Capital Region (NCR).

Property Biz Canada

Owners, tenants in the U.S. raise the roof on green leases

This summer, the Institute for Market Transformation (IMT) and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Better Buildings Alliance announced the new class of Green Lease Leaders, a designation that recognizes companies that have successfully modernized their lease language to include energy efficiency, and encourage landlord-tenant collaboration around sustainability goals.

Green Biz

Local Data Hub Launched in Cambridge

The City of Cambridge, Ontario, Canada has been selected by the World Council of City Data (WCCD) to be one of the first of a global network of Local Data Hubs using city data to drive change. The launch of the Cambridge-WCCD Local Data Hub, along with seven other hubs worldwide, was announced during a forum this week at the United Nations (UN) in New York City on sustainable development.

Exchange Magazine – CBC

IISD launches indicator portal for Canadian Cities

The International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) has created an SDG indicator portal with data from 13 Canadian cities. This data portal seeks to contribute to efforts to track sustainable development and highlights the lessons that can be learned from city-level data analysis.

IISD.org – IISD Indicator Portal

This framework could help measure climate action in cities

How can cities ensure that new actions being taken to mitigate climate change don’t negatively affect broader issues of equity? Likewise, how does a multinational company prove that a sustainable urban development project it is investing in is having a significant local impact — and global ramifications?

Green Biz – GoldStandard.org

More mayors are appointing chief resilience officers

Three years ago, just four cities affiliated with 100 Resilient Cities employed a “chief resilience officer.” As of late July, there were officially 79 within the initiative’s namesake cohort — most of which have survived local political transitions. To quote Michael Berkowitz, president of the Rockefeller Foundation frequently vocalized mantras: “You wouldn’t run a city without a CRO any more than you would a chief of police.”

Green Biz

	Sustainable investments up 25% to $23 trillion
	Global socially responsible investments grew by a quarter to $23 trillion over the last two years, with particularly strong gains in China, Japan and Australia and New Zealand. The overall pace slowed from the 61 percent growth reported in the prior two-year period.
	Bloomberg, July 24, 2017

 

Developers aim for net-zero multifamily homes in Western Canada

Niche Developments has a lofty goal: to be building affordable, net-zero multifamily developments across Western Canada, as standard, within five years. Chief executive officer Peter Purewal says he believes it’s achievable. Mr. Purewal and his business partner John Clarke have been developing with geothermal technology in Alberta for a decade.

The Globe and Mail

Five fire scenarios tested on full-scale mass timber building

Five full-scale mass timber fire tests in a multi-story apartment building with promising results will be used to inform code changes. The International Code Council Ad-hoc Committee on Tall Wood Buildings conducted the fire scenarios tested in two one-bedroom apartments constructed using mass timber.

BDC Network

Ontario’s energy-efficiency rules will save homeowners money

When Ian Roland and Linda Rothstein, who are partners in both law and marriage, decided to extensively renovate their home three years ago, they made green design a key priority, and not just because they wanted, as Mr. Roland puts it, to “leave as little footprint as possible.” He describes their rambling old midtown house that cost them about $7,000 a year in electricity and gas bills.

Globe and Mail

The next step in sustainable design: Bringing the weather indoors

A building’s primary purpose may be to keep the weather out, but most do such an effective job of this that they also inadvertently deprive us of contact with two key requirements for our well-being and effectiveness: nature and change. In the 1950s Donald Hebb’s Arousal Theory established that people need a degree of changing sensory stimulation in order to remain fully attentive.

Green Biz

	Vancouver ice box a test for Passive House
	On July 27, two structures were placed at Vancouver’s Olympic Village – one built to the BC Energy Code and one built to a Passive House standard. One tonne of ice was placed in each structure and the public is invited to guess how much ice will be left at the end of the competition in 18 days.
	Business in Vancouver, July 27, 2017

 

Architecture firms fall short of energy benchmarking goals

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) issued an ambitious challenge to architectural firms in 2006: Make all new buildings, developments, and major renovations carbon-neutral by 2030. In the intervening decade-plus, more than 400 firms with projects in nearly 100 countries have signed onto the AIA’s 2030 Commitment.

Energy Manager Today – BDC Network

Couche-Tard looks to Norway for guidance on electric cars

Alimentation Couche-Tard (ATD.A-T) one of the largest gas retailers in Canada, is looking to Norway for guidance on how to adapt to growing electric car sales. The Quebec-based convenience store company, which established a foothold in the Scandinavian country five years ago, says it wants to ensure it will still appeal to customers if they no longer need to fill up on gas.

Montreal Gazette

Britain to ban new petrol and diesel cars from 2040

Britain will ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2040 in an attempt to reduce air pollution that could herald the end of over a century of popular use of the fossil fuel-guzzling internal combustion engine. Britain’s step, which follows France, amounts to a victory for electric cars that could eventually transform one of the icons of 20th Century capitalism: the automobile itself.

Globe and Mail – Montreal Gazette

Apple’s forests now replace paper used in all packaging

Apple says that 320,000 acres of working forest in China have been certified by the Forest Stewardship Council and that the company is now protecting and creating enough sustainable working forest to cover the paper use in its packaging for all products.

Environmental Leader – GreenBiz

Products, Technology and Design

Scientists dim sunlight, suck up carbon dioxide to cool planet

Scientists are sucking carbon dioxide from the air with giant fans and preparing to release chemicals from a balloon to dim the sun’s rays as part of a climate engineering push to cool the planet. Backers say the risky, often expensive projects are urgently needed to find ways of meeting the goals of the Paris climate deal to curb global warming.

Reuters

Market Trends and Research

Deconstructing CSR: The intrapraneur

Oliver Balch tackles key topics in academic thinking and research on sustainability “Going back to the garage but in a large company.” So Steve Jobs said of a group of his innovator colleagues in his fledging Macintosh company. That was 1985. The term “intrapreneur” had been coined some years earlier, but the concept is only now beginning to be met with rigorous attention in the business literature.

Ethical Corporation

Passive House to move beyond single-family homes

The growth of the Passive House standard in the U.S. has been slow, but it could still produce significant influence, according to a recent panel of industry experts. That group is looking to expand the standard beyond single-family houses to projects like schools, hospitals and high-rise towers, according to a Construction Dive report.

BDC Network

Why ‘cap and trade’ is still the main way to price emissions

Requiring organizations to pay a price on their carbon emissions is widely believed to be the only way to induce the world to significantly cut the amount released into the atmosphere. Republican former statesmen, liberal environmental groups, NASA scientists and large corporations all agree on this point.

Green Biz

Commercial real estate

Why is every new building in Boston made of glass?

If architects, planners, and public officials in Boston mean everything they say about sustainability and climate readiness, why is the city’s latest construction boom filling the skyline with so much glass? From the shimmering height of the Millennium Tower to the waterfront views of 22 Liberty, and a boxy office and condo complex going up at Pier 4, glass exteriors have become a major feature of today’s urban landscape.

Boston Globe

Renewable Energy

Solar panel investment fund underway

It’s sunny days for Kentville-based Nova Solar Capital as its associated community economic development investment fund, Solar Scotia Energy, approaches the $1-million mark. “We’re thrilled,” said Amanda Brulé, the company’s director of marketing, in an interview Tuesday. “The minimum funding (for Scotia Solar Energy) was $750,000 and so far we’ve raised almost $1 million.”

The Chronicle Herald

Government Programs and Incentives

Federal minister doubles down on 2018 deadline for price on pollution

Sitting in the second-floor boardroom at the downtown offices of the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce, Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna said in an interview that while she is “optimistic” that Pallister will ultimately reveal his long-awaited “made-in-Manitoba” approach to fighting climate change, she has also told the province in no uncertain terms that time is running out.

Winnipeg Free Press

First Nations must break reliance on fossil fuel cash

First Nations must break their reliance on oil and gas revenues and resist all tar sand-related development, a chief told Assembly of First Nations delegates Thursday.”We have other economic, political options. We just have to start banding together,” Serge Otis Simon, grand chief of the Kanasetake Mohawk Council, told the 1,300 delegates gathered for the AFN assembly in Regina.

CBC

Canadian business warns Trudeau on rising cost of climate plan

Canada’s climate-change plan and other government measures are heaping costs on businesses and pushing them to a breaking point, the Chamber of Commerce says in a warning to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Chamber President Perrin Beatty asked Trudeau to find ways to cut business costs to offset the impact of an emissions plan that includes a minimum carbon price beginning next year.

Bloomberg

Corporate Sustainability

HBC Releases 2016 Corporate Social Responsibility Report

Today, HBC published its 2016 Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Report, outlining the Company’s global sustainability and social responsibility efforts in four focus areas: Investing in communities where HBC operates; Contributing to a sustainable environment; Sourcing ethically; and Engaging associates.  With operations around the world, HBC is committed to growth that is sustainable, ethical and good for both people and the planet.

Canada Newswire

Cities and Towns

Why London claims to be the Forest City

Joe O’Neil can’t remember a time when London wasn’t nicknamed the Forest City. O’Neil, the former chair of the city’s advisory committee on heritage, said it’s not the numbers, but a green history that crowned London as the Forest City.  “London was originally a huge thick forest,” he said. “It was the city you came upon out of the forest … people couldn’t believe the trees.”

CBC

Water Management

Taking a fresh look at an old salt-water flat

Lost Lagoon has been a freshwater lake for 100 years, a long time in human memory, but just the single beat of a hummingbird’s wings in terms of natural history. Today, otter Susie and otter Sam frolic to the amusement of tourists, carp splash the surface as they slurp food from the bottom, turtles sun themselves on rocks and logs, the beavers are busy.

Vancouver Sun

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