Bold CDPQ investment strategy to address climate change

Bold CDPQ investment strategy to address climate change

A new strategy announced today by Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, the second largest Canadian pension fund with more than USD $228 billion in assets under management, includes commitments to increase its already significant low carbon investments by 50 percent by 2020, and to reduce the carbon intensity of its portfolio by 25 percent by 2025 across all asset classes.

Montreal Gazette – Canada Newswire – Ceres

London’s soaring timber tower a game changer for CLT

One architectural firm is getting headlines for a proposed wood tower that would be the tallest building in London, England. The 80-storey building called Oakwood Timber Tower “is the largest use of cross-laminated timber (CLT) in the U.K. and in Europe,” Kevin Flanagan said at the recent Green Building Festival in Toronto.

Journal of Commerce

Sidewalk Labs unveils ‘smart’ TO neighbourhood

A unit of Google’s parent company, devoted to urban innovation, has signed a deal to map out a new kind of neighbourhood on Toronto’s waterfront that could demonstrate how data-driven technology can improve the quality of city life. On Tuesday, Sidewalk Labs and Waterfront Toronto announced a partnership in which Sidewalk initially will invest $50-million US in a year-long planning process.

Globe and Mail

Regreening could account for one-third of global climate mitigation

Planting trees, restoring peatlands, and better land management could provide 37 percent of the greenhouse gas mitigation needed between now and 2030 to keep global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, according to a new study published in the Proceedings for the National Academy of Sciences. The activities, known as natural climate solutions, could prevent up to 11.3 billion tons of carbon dioxide from reaching the atmosphere every year.

Yale 360 – National Academy of Sciences of the USA

Everybody wins with investments in smart zero-carbon innovation

The case for government’s role in supporting innovation is clear. The Internet, smartphones, GPS, and canola oil are all examples of the public benefitting from government investment in technology and innovation. Governments have played key roles in the development and deployment of so many technologies we use today, in parts of the development cycle that the free market can’t address.

Pembina Institute

Using outer space to help cool buildings on Earth

Researchers may have found a way to make refrigerators and air conditioners more efficient: Just shoot the heat into space. Using a natural optical phenomenon called radiative sky cooling, a group of scientists-turned-entrepreneurs has developed roof panels that they say could reduce the energy needed to cool homes, offices, supermarkets, and data centers.

CS Monitor

How to achieve a zero energy building

Almost 48 percent of energy in the U.S. goes to residential and commercial buildings. Zero energy buildings drastically reduce that energy use by slashing the demand for energy, while supplying the remaining energy needs from renewable energy sources, such as solar panels. Zero energy buildings are connected to the grid, drawing power at night or during sunless days and sending power to the grid when the sun is shining.

RD Magazine

	The campaign for net zero buildings
	It was World Green Building Week (Sept 25 – Oct. 1), with Green Building Councils from across the world campaigning for all buildings to be “net zero” by 2050. The aim is for all new buildings to be operating at net zero carbon from 2030.
	Energy Collective, October 18, 2017

 

Chaudière Falls in Ottawa opens to the public

For the first time in more than 100 years, the historic site of Chaudière Falls has opened to the public. Hydro Ottawa’s Board Chair Jim Durrell and president and CEO, Bryce Conrad were on site to mark the official opening. The event highlighted the site’s new viewing platforms, park space, and design elements that honour Algonquin and Anishinaabe people.

Water Canada

Concrete, cement industry meet in Ottawa about climate change

The Canadian cement and concrete industry is converging on Parliament Hill over the next two days, meeting with Ministers, Members of Parliament, Senators and senior civil servants to convey the importance of its contribution to the economic prosperity of communities across the country and to helping Canadians face the twin challenges of reducing carbon emissions and adapting to climate change.

Globe-net.com

The race to codify resilience design

Last November, the International Code Council launched the Alliance for National & Community Resilience for the purpose of developing a whole community benchmark rating system by 2018. Two months earlier, the American Society of Landscape Architects launched an online guide for resilient landscape planning and design to help communities protect themselves from natural disasters.

BDC Network

Rebuild, retreat, or resist

Hurricanes Harvey and Irma expose the necessity—and limitations—of resilient design and construction measures. Houston is America’s fourth-largest city, thanks in part to its embrace of unfettered growth. But its swagger got doused during the last week of August, when Hurricane Harvey dropped more than 50 inches of rain, bringing a drenched and debilitated southeast Texas to its knees.

BDC Network

	Interactive crosswalk – puts pedestrians first
	Everyone likes to complain about pedestrians (or people walking as I prefer to call them) just popping out in front of drivers like magic, but in fact in the USA 22 percent of walkers’ deaths happen in marked or signalled intersections.
	TreeHugger.com, October 18, 2017

 

Oxford, U.K. to phase in ban of petrol cars

Petrol and diesels vehicles will be banned from Oxford city centre under plans to bring in what officials believe would be the world’s first zero-emissions zone. The ban would be introduced in phases, starting with preventing non-zero-emitting taxis, cars, light commercial vehicles and buses from using a small number of streets in 2020.

The Guardian

Paris plans to ban all but electric cars by 2030

Paris authorities plan to banish all petrol- and diesel-fueled cars from the world’s most visited city by 2030. The move marks an acceleration in plans to wean the country off gas-guzzlers and switch to electric vehicles in a city often obliged to impose temporary bans due to surges in particle pollution in the air.

Reuters – Yale 360

Wynn Boston Harbor adds battery storage, cogeneration plants

Wynn Boston Harbor, a new hotel and casino under construction on the Mystic River in Massachusetts, has plans to add battery storage, rooftop solar, and two cogeneration plants. When completed, the 3 million square foot resort located in Everett will boast an extensive gaming floor, a parking garage that can hold up to 3,000 cars, and a 29-story tower of hotel rooms at a total cost of $2.4 billion now.

Energy Manager Today

Loop NYC would reclaim 24 miles of park space

What was once a busy thoroughfare filled with exhaust fumes and the sounds of honking horns becomes a quiet strip of land, its oil-stained concrete reclaimed by nature and the angry honks of traffic relegated to the past. This reclamation of New York’s streets proposed by New York-based consulting firm Edg would bring 24 miles of park space to New York City’s street grid.

BDC Network

Products, Technology and Design

Updated versions of EnergyPlus and OpenStudio released

New versions of the EnergyPlus engine and the OpenStudio software development kit have been released by the U.S. Department of Energy and national labs. EnergyPlus 8.8.0 includes the following enhancements: two new features are support for urban-scale modeling applications and inclusion of features for recent versions of LEED.

BDC Network

Renewable Energy

US solar asks for protection from foreign imports

A fractured US solar industry will present differing proposals on Tuesday to a government commission considering measures to prop up domestic solar panel makers, who say cheap imports have left them on the verge of collapse. The closely watched trade case before the US International Trade Commission has pitted the nation’s solar installers and developers against two struggling domestic panel makers.

CS Monitor

Scotland is home to World’s first floating wind farm

The world’s first floating wind farm just powered up 15 miles off the coast of Scotland. The wind farm is capable of pumping 30 megawatts of clean electricity into the grid. The turbines of Hywind Scotland stand 253 meters tall in total (around 830 feet), with 78 meters (256 feet) of that bobbing beneath the surface, tethered to the seabed by chains weighing 1,200 tonnes.

Energy Manager Today – Engaget

Residential Green Buildings

Your next home might be built by robots

In Sweden, they build homes in factories with workers using sophisticated tools, and now RANDEK is adding robots. There are many who think that wood is the best material for building; when sustainably harvested it is a renewable resource that stores carbon for the life of the building.

TreeHugger.com

Do homeowners have a right to light on their solar panels?

Perhaps, but what about the windows on a passive house? Why the high tech bias? Ten years ago Lee Adamson put solar panels on the south-facing roof of her house in Toronto and has been generating electricity ever since. She tells the CBC that they shaved 60 percent off her monthly electricity bill.

TreeHugger.com

Government Programs and Incentives

Britain moves to end the burning of coal

Bigger than any medieval castle, with its 12 giant white cooling towers gleaming in the sun, the Drax Power Station dominates the horizon for tens of miles across the flat lands of eastern England. For four decades, it has been one of the world’s largest coal power plants, often generating a tenth of the U.K.’s electricity.

Yale 360

Other

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