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Recent Articles

Pitblado Law takes lead in office energy efficiency

5 years ago

BIZ   • 

Pitblado Law has become the first major Manitoba law firm to adopt energy efficiency practices as part of Manitoba Race to Reduce. The firm occupies two stories of a 760,000-square-foot building on the iconic Winnipeg corner of Portage and Main.

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Vancouver city councillors have voted unanimously to join cities such as Los Angeles and London in declaring a climate emergency. Councillor Christine Boyle, who moved the resolution, says staff now have the mandate to “dramatically strengthen” Vancouver’s climate action plan.

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Real Estate Foundation of BC shared the results from a public opinion poll it commissioned on British Columbians’ views on land use, sustainability and regional planning. The poll found 81% of residents support strong penalties (including jail time) for companies and people who pollute or degrade the land and water.

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Six years ago architect Michael Green took the stage at a TED conference and called for an global era of wood-framed skyscrapers. Some were skeptical. “People really thought I was an idiot,” said Green in a recent interview.

Energy Profiles

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A busy corner of downtown Montreal is about to get a makeover — one that prioritizes pedestrians and creates more green space. Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante announced Tuesday the city’s plan to make Phillips Square, Place du Frère-André and the surrounding streets greener and to highlight the area’s historic value.

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The Ontario government is backing off from key provisions in a bill introduced late last year that would have allowed local municipalities to open up the province’s protected Greenbelt for development while sidestepping laws protecting drinking water.

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A new report from the Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation at the University of Waterloo pegs flooding in major urban centres as Canada’s costliest and fastest-growing extreme-weather challenge. It cites data from the Insurance Bureau of Canada that show payouts for catastrophic losses have been $1.8-billion annually since 2009.

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The Davos Summit kicked off this week with the unveiling of the latest edition of the CDP league table celebrating those global businesses that are “pioneering” efforts to tackle escalating environmental risks.  The influential NGO’s A-list draws on data disclosed by over 6,800 companies.

Canada GBC releases LEED v4.1
In a market that is constantly evolving, one of the hallmarks of LEED is continuous improvement. LEED v4.1 helps project teams meet changing market conditions, including updated energy performance expectations and code requirements

Canada Green Building Council, January 23, 2019

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Lendlease has put sustainability at the core of its goal to create the best places―a commitment that is now its motto. As part of its push for a greener tomorrow, the construction company and investment manager implements innovative energy solutions across its extensive portfolio, including the generation of renewable energy, while also focusing on the well-being of residents and tenants.

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Helping retailers to provide meaningful shopping experiences through environmental stewardship is central to the mission of Cincinnati-based Phillips Edison & Co. (PECO). The retail REIT’s expanding portfolio of California properties equipped with solar arrays resonates with environmentally conscious consumers when they arrive to shop or dine.

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Canada’s first geothermal power plant is under construction in Saskatchewan, and the $50-million facility will power about 5,000 homes and offset 27,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year — taking the equivalent of 7,400 cars of yearly emissions out of the atmosphere.

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The battle to replace fossil fuels with low-carbon power is bumping up against a new practical reality.  As people crowd into cities, the world’s need for concentrated power sources is growing. While the world needs high-density energy  low-carbon renewable power sources sprawl out over the distant hinterland.

BOMA BEST - Building on Zero

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Cancelling multi-billion dollar hydro-electric dam projects like Site C in B.C. and Muskrat Falls in Labrador and providing power with natural gas and wind power would still be cheaper in the long-run, even with billions in sunk costs that governments and ratepayers would have to absorb.

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Scrolling back through the Clean Technica archives, this is a lengthy rundown of notable changes within the solar energy and energy storage industries in 2018.  This is a list of about 50 different significant changes primarily in the U.S. but also in other countries.

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Climate change has claimed its first major corporate victim. San Francisco-based power company PG&E Corp., one of the largest utilities in the U.S., filed for bankruptcy protection this week facing tens of billions of dollars in potential liability from massive California wildfires over the past two years.

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Nearly 30 major global companies have committed over $1.0 billion to develop, deploy and bring to scale solutions to reduce and manage such waste. The commitment in the form of a new group, Alliance to End Plastic Waste is being chaired by David Taylor, president, and CEO of Procter & Gamble.

BOMA BEST

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The province has vowed to keep raw logs in B.C. after unveiling a two-year plan to revitalize forestry along the coast. In a room filled with loggers, Premier John Horgan unveiled policy reforms aimed at incentivizing companies to process raw logs in B.C., with the goal of bucking a decades-long trend of local mill closures and increased log exports.

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Fast-food chicken chain KFC said Thursday that all plastic-based, consumer-facing packaging will be recoverable or reusable by 2025. Walmart Canada announced plans on Wednesday that include reducing plastic bag use by 2025 that will take about one billion bags out of circulation.

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More than half of all food produced in Canada is wasted, with the food industry putting the vast majority of it into landfills. Previous studies have pointed to consumers for the bulk of the waste, but the new research shows industrial producers are primarily responsible.

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When you throw your food’s plastic packaging into a blue bin you don’t expect it to be exported across the world to be dumped or burned. Images provided by Greenpeace show mountains of dumped plastic packaging.

Informa

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It’s December in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, about 20 degrees below freezing on what is considered a warm day, and for the first winter ever Nicole Maksagak thought she would be driving in the comfort of a Ford F-150 pick-up truck.

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The Environmental Protection Agency hit a 30-year low in 2018 in the number of pollution cases it referred for criminal prosecution, Justice Department data show. EPA said in a statement that it is directing “its resources to the most significant and impactful cases.”

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Huang Wenshang, Chair of Sinopec an arm of China Petrochemical Corp. in a recent speech at a conference in China entitled “The Future is Here” urged the human race to “go beyond the ‘burning era’, to give-up fossil fuels, embrace electrification and work towards a greener future where electric vehicles dominate cities’ roads.”

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China’s December coal output climbed 2.1 per cent from the year before, government data showed, hitting the highest level in over three years as major miners ramped up production amid robust winter demand and after the country started up new mines.

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