ottawacleantechA developer who hopes his new building will soon be certified as the most environmentally benign mixed-use building in North America told an Ottawa audience yesterday afternoon that achieving the most exacting green building standards in the construction industry was “actually not all that difficult.” And, he added, if similar practices were adopted across the construction industry, it would mean a reduction in the emission of climate-changing greenhouse-gas emissions equivalent to the entire output of the transportation sector.

Jonathan Westeinde, managing partner of Windmill Development Group, was speaking at the Ottawa Cleantech Initiative’s Green Building Showcase held yesterday at the Irving Greenburg Theatre Centre, part of a mixed-use complex his company built that also includes 43 condominium apartments. Built on a remediated brownfield property that used to house less-than-benign automobile-related industries, the complex has been submitted for certification under the Canada Green Building Council’s LEED Green Building Rating System that certifies higher energy and environmental performance of buildings and communities. Even if the building fails to achieve the highest platinum rating, something Westeinde said it was within a few points of hitting, it should still qualify as the highest-rated LEED mixed-use building in North America.

Getting there required “nothing bleeding edge” in terms of technology, he said. More time had to be spent planning the job, sourcing materials and allowing for such things as the longer curing time required for the high fly-ash concrete the developer chose for the lower GHG emissions it produces during its manufacture. The well-established technologies, approaches and products used in the building include a passive solar heat wall on the building’s deliberately southwest-facing facade that contributes fully five percent of the building’s heating requirement, a system that captures and recycles stormwater and required an amendment to municipal rules to implement, dual-flush toilets, compact fluorescent bulbs and natural lighting, and a range of products, many of which required Windmill to “redo our whole supply chain,” that emit no or little volatile organic compounds.

Westeinde maintained the building cost no more than a conventional approach, something confirmed by LEED Canada’s Anne Auger who earlier told the session that achieving the lowest level of LEED certification adds less than two percent to construction costs, something that can be recouped in less than two years. Achieving higher certifications may cost more, but the return on that higher investment is still measured in a time frame that makes eminent sense for developers and building owners.

The impact of Canada’s built environment on greenhouse gas emissions is massive, with our homes, buildings and infrastructure contributing more of the climate-changing gasses than any other sector of the economy. “We can achieve 1990 (emission) levels or even carbon-neutral levels,” Westeinde insisted. “If we start doing everything that this building represents … the savings (in carbon emissions) that could be realized in the construction industry are equal to the entire emissions of the transportation sector today.”

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