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Smart building construction data offers cost, energy savings

5 years ago

Smart building technologies are giving companies a green edge, saving construction contractors time, energy costs, and the need to redo some tasks. PCL Construction has adopted the concept extensively, creating its own Job Site Insights platform.

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Among 12 Ontario projects that have earned LEED certification since July 1, the fit-out of the 11th and 12th floors of Menkes’ 35-storey One York office building to accommodate the new Canadian headquarters of BentallGreenOak was almost a case of gilding the lily.

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Let’s test your sustainability knowledge. What do these businesses have in common: Max Burger, a Swedish fast-food outlet; Mevo, a New Zealand car-share company; Briggs Automotive, a U.K.-based boutique sportscar firm; and Interface, a multinational carpet tile manufacturer?

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In a lawsuit filed in N.Y. state Walmart proposed an explanation for recent rooftop blazes at its stores. “The answer was obvious and startling,” Walmart said. “The stores all had Tesla solar panels installed by Tesla on their roofs.”

Energy Profiles Limited

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A 2017 seismic evaluation of 70 Simon Fraser University Burnaby campus structures found 34 buildings, more than half, were “high risk”. This indicates a more-than-10-per-cent risk of partial or full collapse in a “moderately serious” earthquake.

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Of the three models researchers used to forecast conditions in B.C. woodlands, even the most optimistic showed that by 2050, summers will be between 3C-7C warmer and 30 per cent drier, resulting in a threefold increase in average burned forest area.

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The co-founder of Generate Capital, Jigar Shah has been following and shaping the clean energy sector for decades. His weapon of choice: financial mechanisms to open up new clean energy options. Among Shah’s claim to fame is founding SunEdison in 2003.

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Widespread low-cost autonomous vehicles that are also electric could become a reality for the U.S., but only if the country takes key lessons from China and India RMI says in a report called Driving a Shared, Electric, Autonomous Mobility.

BOMA

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In the Mission neighbourhood of San Francisco lies an oasis made of bent pipes and reclaimed wood – complete with benches for weary pedestrians and plants that give the sidewalk a pop of green. It’s squeezed into two former parking spots.

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The debate has torn the environmental movement in recent years: can hydropower projects be financed by green bonds? New European standards have just been published, which Hydro-Québec is confident of respecting.

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Imagine there’s a severe flood in a small Ontario town. Imagine the flood washes out a key bridge, which serves as a fire and ambulance route. The town leaders want to replace the bridge in a different location.

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A 300-metre section of a slumping hillside high above the Bow River in southeast Calgary has been shored up by adding 236 massive concrete piles with the goal of stopping further erosion. It’s taken three years to reshape the hillside.

City of Coquitlam - Land Sales

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After spending $330,000 to store them in hopes of finding a recycling solution, the city will now bury 2,000 tonnes previously collected clamshell plastics into landfills starting this month after a concerted effort to land a cost-effective recycling alternative proved in vain.

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The Ontario government wants to reduce the recycling burden on municipalities by shifting the cost of Blue Box programs onto companies that produce recyclable waste. Starting in 2023, waste producers will start funding and operating some of Ontario’s 240 municipal blue-box programs.

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Montreal is investing $167 million to establish a biomethanation plant for organic waste that will generate renewable gas energy. It is one of five organic waste-treatment facilities the city has been planning to build for the last 11 years.

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According to Zion Market Research’s Smart Waste Collection Technology Market By Solution: Global Industry Perspective, Comprehensive Analysis, and Forecast, 2018–2025 the global smart waste collection technology market was USD $78M in 2018 and is expected to reach around $227M by 2025.

Agents for real change

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The City of Edmonton wants homeowners to warm up to the idea of harnessing the sun’s energy by almost tripling its rebate for home solar installations, helping to fill a void created by the suspension of a provincial rebate program.

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Scheduled to be up and running in 2021, the $325-million Golden South Wind Energy Facility is expected to produce 200 megawatts of wind energy. That will almost double the amount of wind energy the province produces.

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A First Nation west of Longview, Alta., is celebrating the completion of the first solar power project in its history.  The new solar system on the Eden Valley Reserve received a special ceremonial blessing Tuesday, along with a community celebration and BBQ.

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There are 62 million residential locations in the United States at moderate to extreme flood risk. A Verisk report titled Sizing the Personal Flood Insurance Market estimates reviving the private flood insurance market could generate $41.6 billion for insurers.

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