Under One Roof

Last October, Canadian Geographic magazine published an investigative feature of mine on the emerging alliance between the green-building movement and the heritage-conservation community. During the reporting and research I uncovered a really interesting story of two different, but often complementary, groups with a shared passion for the built environment.

Unfortunately, the magazine does not release its content online. After several friends asked after the piece, I’ve created a .PDF of the article and published it here. If you missed it the first time, I hope you get a chance to check it out. Photography in the story is by Marina Dodis. As always, let me know what you think in the comments below. Thanks.

Under One Roof [.PDF, 1.8MB], Canadian Geographic, October 2009.

A “Grand Tour” of Our Clean-Energy Future

Photograph by Markel Redondo/PANOS

Are you as sick of Earth Day stories as I am? Then I implore you to read The New Grand Tour, a long and masterful piece of reporting in The Walrus.

Chris Turner, author of The Geography of Hope, takes a trip around the clean-energy and green-economy innovations of present-day Europe. It’s an inspiring piece of reporting, with stops in pedestrian and bicycle haven Copenhagen, a ride on Spain’s AVE high-speed rail network, and a visit to a solar generating station. Turner visits with a couple who live in a passivhaus (like the new one in Whistler, btw). They lay out their energy bills on the kitchen table to show how the economics make dollars and Eurocents, given the right enabling policies.

In 2008, Harald Müller and Barbara Braun paid €398.69 (about $560) for their electricity consumption and €332.81 for their heat consumption. The same year, they were paid €3,750.29 for the electricity produced by the solar panels on their roof. Their net revenue totalled €3,018.79. They estimate that they’re still a few years from fully paying off their household power plant, but by 2012 or so they’ll be looking at more than a decade of pure profit.

This is the rub. “Going green” is not about hemp shopping bags and grapefruit-based cleansers, folks. It’s about public infrastructure and liveable cities. It’s about public policies that turn every rooftop into a cash machine.

Scared of subsidies? Then maybe it doesn’t hurt to be reminded that, according to an Ecojustice investigation, Canada’s oil and gas industry enjoys roughly a billion dollars a year in handouts. In 2006, the United States oil and gas industry received USD$3.06 Billion in federal subsidies, while the nation’s coal industry received USD$2.8 Billion.

The Stern Review estimated that the fossil-fuel industries globally receive about USD$150 billion per year. Subsidies for renewables and incentives for energy efficiency together receive about UDS$9 billion.

In other words, we’re already paying subsidies. And we’re not getting much out of them but deep trouble.

I’m “For Bowen.” (But Not Your Bowen.)

A petition is presently circulating through my community; it opposes a proposed development on the grounds that it is “far too big for our island.” The Cape Roger Curtis Neighborhood Plan has its shortcomings, sure, but also its strengths—including space set aside for a seniors care facility, affordable housing, community food gardens and composting, an outdoor amphitheater, bike paths, $7 million dollars worth of amenities, and hundreds of acres of protected parkland. More than 75 percent of the development is within a five minute walk of its center crossroads, where a bus stop, general store, or car co-op lot could potentially be located.

The plan embodies a number of smart-growth principles, and in my mind it is a better choice than the alternative—no parkland, just a sprawling subdivision of 58 10-acre lots, each likely crowned with a single McMansion. Though the opponents of the plan insist that the land owners do not have the legal authority to build out that sprawl nightmare, the truth is, they do. And they might end up doing just that if the community says thumbs-down to the proposal currently on the table.

Those behind the “no” petition are running a well-organized campaign that includes phone tree work. So far more than 650 people have endorsed the document; in doing so they affirm that they are “For Bowen.” That doesn’t sit right with me, so I wrote this letter to the local paper this week.

If you call me on the phone and ask me if I am “for Bowen,” here’s what I’ll tell you.

Cute, But Does It Work?

My wife came into the Eco-Shed yesterday while I was working in there and straight away told me to “turn down the damn heat.” It was so warm in the place that I was stripped down to my T-shirt, and such luxuries are expensive when it’s five degrees below freezing outside — which it is these days.  “Just turn it down and put on a sweater!,” she implored.

But the heat was free. This is The Eco-Shed’s first full winter and so long as we have sunny skies — like we do right now — I’ll be damned if it the place doesn’t warm up all by itself just as we hoped it would.

For those of you just joining us, it’s a passive solar building with generous amounts of Low-E “Hard Coat” glass, which admits more thermal radiation, combined with a concrete floor that soaks up that heat, and excellent insulation to keep it inside. If anything, it works a little too well, it was a bit of a solar oven in there yesterday afternoon. I pulled the shades, bumped up the ventilation system and cracked a window.

I bleemed off the shed weather report to Dan Parke , my architect. “Beautiful,” he replied. Indeed.

Backstage at Dockside Green

Just back froma quick hop over to to Victoria, B.C. where I spoke at the annual meeting of the Victoria Car-Share Co-op, and also snuck in a backstage tour of Dockside Green, the highest-rated LEED Platinum development in the world.

Joe Van Belleghem, a chartered accountant and the cofounder of Windmill West, the project’s developer, graciously showed me around. Here’s a shot of a new commercial building on the site; the three turbines up top will power the ventilation system when the wind blows. Workers are installing photovoltaics on the window awnings.

Here’s Joe showing off his wastewater treatment plant. The development treats all of its sewage onsite, which is more than you can say about the whole city of Victoria. By the end of the process, the one-time “wastewater” is almost good enough to drink. It’s a challenging environment for photos, but beneath the grates underfoot is a froth of raw sewage. It didn’t smell a bit.

Here’s the roof of the second tower of Synergy, seen from the first. Those are food gardens up there for the residents.

Update: File under, credit where it’s due: My pal Dan Paris at Vancity Enterprises points out that his company, along with Vancity Credit Union, together own a 75 percent stake in Dockside along with Joe’s company Windmill West. Vancity Enterprises is as green as they come: The company’s Verdant project, in the new neighborhood at my alma mater, Simon Fraser Univeristy, is evidently even more energy efficient than Synergy, the building I toured at Dockside. It also sold at 20 percent below market value and uses an innovative legal agreement that Dan’s company created to protect affordability in perpetuity. Both these guys are leaders, and they deserve acclaim.

I visited Victoria as a guest of Harbour Air, North America’s only carbon-neutral scheduled airline. This all-floatplane company serves Canada’s West Coast, and purchases carbon offsets for each flight on behalf of each of its passengers. Thanks for the ride, gang, and keep up the good work!