No, you haven't stumbled across Treehugger.com accidentally (though if you haven't been there before, you should check it out.) And no, this blog isn't strictly about green building, but it is about tracking trends in the construction sector, and as I pointed in my first post here, no conversation looms larger in our industry right now than this one.
This afternoon, I had the pleasure of attending a tour of the Minto Eco-Home in Manotick (about a 15 minute drive south of Ottawa), a joint presentation by Minto's project director Serge Desjardins, Minto's manager of innovation and green solutions Robert Smith (that that title exists at all is a testament to the power of the green building phenomenon), and Douglas Rowland from CMHC, whose EQuilibrium program provided the grants that made this development possible (or at least viable.)
The home is called Inspiration and it is a project that Minto is using to test innovative construction and envelope techniques and materials to achieve a net zero energy building. The EQuilibrium program bills itself as "a national housing initiative ... that brings the private and public sectors together to develop healthy homes that produce as much energy as they consume on an annual basis."
In other words, the CMHC uses this vehicle to promote and fund net zero builds across Canada. They will also coordinate and fund a metering initiative for one year after the home is sold to track how it performs under actual usage scenarios. (In other words, the first owner of this home will be a bit of a guinea pig - but that's a worthy tradeoff for living in a home that actually produces excess energy and sells it back to the hydro company at a profit!)
I won't go into too much detail about the home itself, because we will be doing a longer piece on this project for the June issues of both the GOHBA Impact! and the Ottawa Construction News, and I will post the article here when it goes to print. Basically, though, the build achieves net zero by employing a highly insulated building envelope (double wall construction with an R-Value of 40 and ceilings at R 60), triple-pane low-e argon filled windows, a solar HRV ventilation system, and a gaggle of roof-installed photovoltaic panels.
Another neat feature of the home is its sophisticated green-plug-enabled electrical system, which will allow the homeowner to use special green outlets in any room for any items that do not need continuous power when no one is home. Then, with the flick of a switch, they will be able to turn off computers, cable boxes and that TV the kids left on downstairs before heading out, and thus avoid unnecessary energy consumption.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about the tour (aside from seeing the home itself) was the interesting discussion it promoted from the 10 or so guests who were present. As we were waiting for stragglers to arrive before heading into the house, a stimulating conversation about the strengths (and weaknesses) of LEED broke out.
I mentioned the difficulties that many developers have expressed to me around trying to meet the certification in rural areas, a statement to which both Minto reps nodded in agreement: the Eco-home is in the middle of a giant field on the south end of the south end of Ottawa, so there were no LEED points to be had here for, say, convenient access to transit!
(By the way, if you are wondering just how and what LEED awards points for, I have uploaded their checklist and published it here for your viewing pleasure.)
Another attendee expressed some degree of pessimism around what he viewed as the trend of people in the industry jumping on the 'green bandwagon', to paraphrase, and he wondered if there was any real meat behind all the green potatoes being promoted. The discussion quickly turned to the whole issue of Greenwashing, which I wrote about in yesterday's posting.
But Robert Smith from Minto (who is a certified LEED AP) made a great point here that I agree with 100 percent when he said that despite its problems and shortcomings, he believes LEED is still good for the industry because it allows builders to quantify their green initiatives in a meaningful way (there's that Seth Godin principle again), and encourages them to consider new ways of doing business (and there's that paradigm shift I spoke about yesterday, too.)
I think what Minto is doing here is a really great sign and I hope they continue with the program. While I think it is admirable when smaller developers like Dharma Developments here in Ottawa and Doug Tarry Homes in St. Thomas go out on a limb and innovate in the green building space despite the additional up-front costs associated with doing so, the reality is that the industry as a whole can't truly change until the big dogs like Minto (and Tamarack and Richcraft...) start using their relatively massive RND budgets to really drive innovation and progress in sustainable homebuilding.
As Serge explained to me, at the end of the day, market demand is simply impossible to ignore. Customers are asking for ecologically friendly dwellings and are willing to pay a higher up-front cost to purchase them, knowing that they will recoup the difference in energy savings relatively quickly, and Minto is not going to leave that money sitting on the table for smaller custom home builders and niche developers to take.
There used to be a terribly vicious cycle that held true when it came to green construction: Builders didn't want to shell out extra cash to offer ecologically-friendly homes because they were afraid that competitors would just continue business-as-usual and steal away all the customers with their lower prices.
At the same time, consumers claimed to be environmentally conscious, but still made price their top concern when push came to shove. The end result was, for the longest time, a huge disincentive for builders to bother catering to the "green niche" at all.
It's nice to finally see that cycle breaking and that "green niche" becoming the general home-buying population.
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