St. Albert's biggest greenhouse will be one of the star attractions next week in a new tour designed to promote green buildings.
The Enjoy Centre is one of six commercial buildings in the Edmonton area that will be featured in next week's Eco-Solar Commercial Tour. A spin-off of the Eco-Solar Home Tour, the event is meant to promote energy efficient design in non-residential buildings.
Tour organizer Andrew Mills said he got the idea for the event when the company he was working for chopped all the energy-conserving features out of its new building due to a budget crunch.
Yet just eight per cent of a building's life-cycle costs go towards its actual construction, he notes, citing information from the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association – the other 92 per cent is energy and upkeep.
"If we don't put in energy efficient features, if we don't build with the best materials, if we go out and buy the very cheapest building we can put up, we're kidding ourselves, because it doesn't pay," he said.
The Eco-Solar Home Tour Society (of which Mills is the vice-president) decided to hold a tour of efficient commercial buildings to show people what was possible. It's being held in conjunction with the Eco-Solar Home Tour, which happens June 9.
"People don't know that commercial buildings can be energy efficient," Mills argues, and would build them that way if they did.
And it's important that we do, he adds: commercial buildings account for about 20 per cent of our energy use and greenhouse gas emissions, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Green pays off
Visitors on the tour will get to explore various commercial buildings in and around Edmonton and ask their owners how they work.
Co-owner Jim Hole will be at the Enjoy Centre on June 7 to explain its many green features, including its rooftop gardens, rainwater collectors, heat-retention curtains and cogeneration system – a natural gas generator that produces about 90 per cent of the building's electricity.
Traditional buildings get their power from coal-fired power plants that vent their waste heat to the atmosphere, Hole said.
Cogeneration just makes more sense, as it lets you use the waste heat from electricity generation to warm a building.
"It's a very efficient way of generating electricity," he said, and, due to the energy it saves, should pay for itself in five to 10 years.
Also on the tour is Bobby Ammar's Ericksen Infiniti dealership in Edmonton. Built in 2008, the dealership is the top Infiniti outlet in Canada, he said, and features geothermal heating, heat-recovery ventilators, and 36 solar-air heaters.
"You walk in, and it feels like a boutique hotel," Ammar said.
Infiniti wanted to build a super-efficient building to show its environmental leadership, Ammar said. The geothermal and solar-air systems prevent about 60 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions a year, while the efficient magnetic-induction lights in its showroom save them about $1,400 a month in electricity.
How to get more
Most business owners focus on profit and return on investment and don't want to wait for the long paybacks of energy savings, Ammar said, when asked why there aren't more car dealerships like his.
"The environment isn't considered."
Many of these technologies are highly specialized, Hole said, so most owners aren't familiar with them.
"It takes some pretty significant up-front investment to do these things," he added, which could deter some from making them.
"What you need is people in your own region that have done it," Hole said. "Then, you can say okay, maybe now I'm not quite as scared to try it."
The tour runs from June 4 to 8. Visit ecosolar.ca for details.
