Toronto’s George Brown College to get a tall wood tower

Toronto’s George Brown College to get a tall wood tower

To take Canada from hewers of wood to fabricators of high-tech tall timber buildings –that’s the promise of a new building proposed by Toronto’s George Brown College. It’s an exciting prospect. And if built, the structure will be a technical landmark. But will it also – as it should – elevate the art of architecture? Dubbed “The Arbour,” the building represents a move by the college to make a mark with a building of international significance.

Globe and Mail – Canada Newswire

Advances in wood construction driving development innovations

An unconventional cabin raised up on recycled gas pipes and an estate home with a floating roof took centre stage at the 10th annual Prairie Wood Design Awards earlier this month on March 13 as architects, designers and engineers were applauded for pushing the boundaries of wood construction in residential buildings. The category winnera was a net-zero townhouse development in Edmonton by Habitat Studio.

Globe and Mail

ENERGY STAR building certifications now in Canada

Natural Resources Canada has taken the next step in Canada’s push to promote a low carbon economy, launching its ENERGY STAR certification program for commercial and institutional buildings on March 26. “ENERGY STAR has long been a trusted label to help make smart decisions about energy use,” said Natural Resources Canada spokesperson Catherine Leroux.

Sustainable Biz Canada

New green neighbourhood at Montreal’s Technôpole Angus

An area of east-end Montreal that once housed a major Canadian Pacific Railway repair shop will soon be home to a green neighbourhood and an additional $250 million worth of development. The Technopôle Angus will include 895,000 square feet worth of housing, office space, retail space and green spaces.

Property Biz Canada

Enwave to provide district energy to 100 Queens Quay East

Enwave Energy Corporation announced that it will provide district energy service expansion to Toronto’s East Bayfront community.   Menkes Developments Ltd. will be the first developer to use the Enwave service at 100 Queens Quay East, a 25-storey Class “AAA” LEED Platinum building—which broke ground last month.

Globe Newswire

Tignish District Heating Project supplying 10 buildings

“Tignish is doing its part to slow down climate change,” says Dryden Buote, acting chairman of Tignish Initiatives board of directors. Buote was speaking during the official opening of Tignish Initiatives district heating project which supplies heat energy to 10 government and commercial buildings in town.

Journal Pioneer

Ajax biomass district heating system focuses on improvement

Index Energy is on a mission to encourage diversion from landfills, clean energy use and provide district heating for the Town of Ajax, Ont., just east of Toronto. The parent company, Index International Group, is headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden and Jupiter, Fla., but Index Energy is the company’s power generation facility in Ajax.

Canadian Biomass Magazine

	Washington State requires timber construction
	Washington State, which has a significant timber industry, has already adopted a law directing the state’s building code council to adopt rules for mass timber products for residential and commercial building construction.
	BDC Network, April 3, 2018

 

Experts chosen for buildings resilience benchmarking

A distinguished group of specialists has been chosen to help develop the nation’s first community-wide resilience benchmarks related to buildings. The group consists of subject matter experts who will assist the International Code Council and the Alliance for National & Community Resilience (ANCR) in the effort. The American Institute of Architects and the American Wood Council will support the project.

BDC Network

A city in the Rockies paves the way for net-zero energy leases

Boulder, Colorado, is a national leader in sustainability — especially when it comes to the built environment. The city of Boulder has the most aggressive new construction energy code in the country, the nation’s first voter-approved tax dedicated to addressing climate change and a benchmarking policy that requires efficiency actions in addition to building energy performance awareness.

Green Biz

McGill prof has a better way to flood-proof homes

After last spring’s devastating floods across Quebec, one McGill University professor has pitched a new solution to the City of Montreal — one he says is a faster and cheaper way to protect people’s homes. According to Dr. Amar Sabih, all you need to flood-proof your home is synthetic plastic tarp made of Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and metal barriers commonly seen at outdoor events in the city.

CBC

Îles-de-la-Madeleine residents retreat from rising seas

On the island of Havre-Aubert, grass and weeds grow through the cracks of a fractured asphalt road. It’s the southernmost of the Îles-de-la-Madeleine, a picturesque archipelago about 150 kilometres northeast of Prince Edward Island. Abandoned years ago, the road disappears over a red sandstone cliff.

Globe and Mail

	UK carbon emissions levels same as in 1890
	Ditching coal has brought the country a long way. Now they have to tackle transportation too. It’s a story so good that it’s worth repeating. Because Carbon Brief just updated their data for 2017, and it turns out that CO2 emissions fell a further 2.6% last year.
	TreeHugger, March, 2018

 

Orsted has halved one country’s CO2 emissions

Ørsted has transformed itself from its origins as Danish Oil and Natural Gas to a leading renewable-focused power utility with an installed offshore wind capacity of 3.9 GW. With operations across Denmark, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Germany and the Netherlands, Ørsted is also expanding its offshore wind business to the United States and Taiwan.

GreenBiz

Canada is one of the biggest wasters of food, report finds

An international environmental group suggests that reducing Canada’s colossal food waste would be a smart business move and good for the environment. “You can make a really strong business case for action,” said David Donaldson of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, an environmental watchdog agency set up under the North American free-trade agreement.

Globe and Mail – Global Newswire

U.K. company looking to build hydrogen plant in B.C.

British and Japanese companies are working with British Columbia to develop a pilot plant that would use renewable energy to produce hydrogen for both export and domestic use in hydrogen fuel cells. The B.C. government announced that it is contributing $230,000 to a study that could lead to a pilot electrolysis plant being built in B.C. by ITM Power in the U.K.

Business in Vancouver

EPA eases off vehicle emissions standards imposed by Obama

U.S. environmental regulators announced April 2 they will ease emissions standards for cars and trucks, saying that a timeline put in place by President Barack Obama was not appropriate and set standards “too high.” The Environmental Protection Agency said it completed a review that will affect vehicles for model years 2022-2025 but it did not specify details on new standards, which it said would be forthcoming.

Canadian Manufacturing

Market Trends and Research

Strong climate-change believers don’t understand carbon pricing

More than four in 10 Canadians surveyed about climate change last month said there is conclusive evidence climate change is real, that it is being caused by people and that they believe addressing the problem should be a top government priority. However, even among this group — labelled by the Ecofiscal Commission as “climate believers” — only two-thirds see a carbon price as the best way to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Globe and Mail – CBC

Fewer Albertans believe in global warming than other Canadians

Fewer Albertans believe there’s strong evidence for global warming than anyone else in Canada, a survey released Wednesday indicates. Only 52 per cent of Alberta respondents see conclusive or solid evidence the Earth’s average temperature has been growing warmer in the last few decades, while 16 per cent said there’s little or no proof this is happening, according to a poll by Canada’s Ecofiscal Commission.

Edmonton Journal

Studies show Paris targets crucial to maintaining Arctic ice

When Canada and other countries signed on to the Paris climate agreement in 2015 they pledged to hold global warming to under 2 C by the end of this century and work to a more ambitious limit of 1.5 degrees. Now, new research by Canadian and U.S. climate scientists reveals that between those two numbers lies a world of difference for the future of the Arctic and its peoples.

Globe and Mail

Municipal Policy and Urban Issues

Conflux Canada pushes sustainability, green buildings agenda

Getting Conflux Canada off the ground was a bit nerve wracking. But as founder James McNeil prepares for year two he’s already looking for ways to grow the event, which focuses on sustainability, clean techand green buildings. “The main reason for getting it started was a very deep desire to make a difference and try to push this anyway I know how,” McNeil said. The second annual Conflux Canada is set for May 10 at the Ottawa Conference and Events Centre.

Sustainable Biz Canada

Commercial real estate

The last straw: Vancouver restaurants and bars going strawless

A growing crowd of clubs, bars and restaurants in and around Vancouver have reached their last straw. The watering holes and eateries, in locations that stretch from the ‘burbs to downtown’s Granville Strip, are ditching disposable, plastic straws amid a broader push by policy-makers and environmental groups to cut down on the reliance of single-use plastics. Some, like the Commodore Ballroom, have barred them entirely, while others like White Spot have made them available by request only.

Vancouver Sun

Renewable Energy

Solar project slated for Gull Bay First Nation

Ontario Power Generation (OPG) has announced it is co-ordinating a project with the Kiashke Zaaging Anishinaabek (KZA)/Gull Bay First Nation in northwestern Ontario to introduce a microgrid system using solar power, battery storage and grid technology to help reduce diesel use at KZA. The project will reduce diesel use by approximately 110,000 litres each year, said a recent media statement.

Construct Canada

Residential Real Estate

The Ecoflats by Solares Architecture are a glorious failure

They worked so hard to meet the Passivhaus target and they missed it. There are not a few people out there who think that the Passive House or Passivhaus concept sets an “arbitrary energy target that ignores everything else.” Another critic once called it “a single metric ego-driven enterprise that satisfies the architect’s need for checking boxes, and the energy nerd’s obsession with BTUs.”

TreeHugger

Government Programs and Incentives

Ottawa to tax polluting industries in non-compliant provinces

Ottawa is targeting heavy industry in provinces that fail to adhere to federal standards for carbon pricing by forcing those emitters to reduce their greenhouse gases by 30 percent or pay tax on emissions above that threshold. The federal carbon levy – which could grow to tens of millions of dollars per plant – would currently only apply to Saskatchewan and New Brunswick.

Globe and Mail

Federal climate plan to yield to Alberta on oil sands, pipelines

The federal government plans to provide greater certainty for oil sands and pipeline developers that they won’t be held back by concerns about greenhouse gas emissions so long as they fit under Alberta’s existing regulatory plan. Industry has raised concerns that Ottawa’s proposed environmental assessment regulations will impose a tough climate test, creating new uncertainty for energy project developers.

Globe and Mail

Carbon pricing would address gaps in Sask. climate change strategy

A new report says Saskatchewan falls short in addressing climate change, but the good news is the province has taken some steps toward getting where it needs to go, according to a University of Regina researcher and ecological economist. The province’s carbon change strategy, which was unveiled last December and did not include a carbon tax, looks at only half the province’s sources of emissions.

CBC

Corporate Sustainability

Canada’s green companies are heading for the exit

You know Canadian competitiveness is in big trouble when even investors in renewable energy – favoured by Canadian governments through subsidies, plus carbon taxes and regulatory overload on competing fossil-fuel energy — are leaving. Florida-based NextEra Energy Partners LP said Monday the sale of its wind and solar generation assets in Ontario to the CPPIB for US$582.3 million was specifically motivated by U.S. tax reform.

Financial Post

Cities and Towns

Will city step in to save what could be Toronto’s oldest tree?

How much is a 300-year-old red oak, perhaps the city’s oldest and largest tree, worth? That’s the question realtor Waleed Khaled Elsayed is asking on behalf of his client, on whose property the massive tree stands. About 24 metres tall and with a circumference of about five metres, the oak frames the bungalow with its expansive branches.

Toronto Star

Transit, bikes and transportation

Walking, biking Torontonians stage “die-in” for safer streets

People who bike and walk in Toronto staged a “die-in” Monday evening, lying down on the concrete in front of the iconic city hall to highlight how many people are dying for real in the streets of the city. It’s in advance of a vote on Tuesday about transforming Toronto’s main drag, Yonge Street, from six lanes to four with improved sidewalks and bike lanes.

TreeHugger

Waste Management

Eastern Ontario recycling heading to the landfill

The Township of North Glengarry, Ont., is having to send some of its recyclable materials to the landfill as Chinese restrictions on foreign waste have closed a market for resale and slowed the processing of recyclables. Nearly half the world’s recyclables were being to sent to China, when China decided to crack down on imports of four classes of recycled materials, including plastics and unsorted paper.

CBC

Your lifestyle is making blue box recycling unsustainable

Our changing lifestyles over the past few decades have dramatically altered the types of materials we put in blue bins. And that’s led to flatlining recycling rates and ballooning costs for municipalities across Canada that are struggling to cope with the changes.

CBC – CBC

Other

	Sustainable Biz followers on Twitter
	Follower The Buildings Performance Institute EU is a Brussels based think-tank delivering policy analysis, advice and implementation support for buildings energy performance.
	Follow BizSustainably, the most comprehensive news feed on Twitter for Canadian business concerned about sustainability.