Nicholas Patocki-Tomas, Nathaniel Kenninger, Laura Heely
Windmill Development Group, a Canadian “visionary real estate development company” has made it their mission to engage only in projects that are seen as sustainable and green, with all of their projects achieving LEED Platinum certification. (Standing for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, LEED is a rating system that scores the environmental impact of new buildings, with Platinum being the highest level of certification.)
Well, they’ve decided to challenge themselves again, this time with (arguably) their most ambitious project to date: Zibi, aiming to create the world’s most sustainable community. The project combines the sustainability targets set out by LEED, along with a new system, One Planet, that not only measures a building’s environmental performance, construction methods and materials, but one that also measures the sustainability of an entire land development in the context of its community.
Clearly this is no easy feat, as there are so many stakeholders in the community they are proposing to build-up. It will be situated on a previously industrial island, by the beautiful Chaudière falls, now a brownfield that required contaminated soils to be assessed and cleaned up. The island is in the heart of the Canadian capital city of Ottawa, on the Ottawa river, an expansive divide between the English province of Ontario, and the French province of Quebec, on originally aboriginal Algonquin land. The history of Canada is young, and its cultural groups continue to try to navigate the complexities of land development in the 21st century, when building sustainable cities and spaces that sensitively take the considerations of all parties.
This is why all stakeholders (French, English, and First Nations) were taken into account in the development of this system, alongside Windmill, through their retained not-for-profit consultants Bioregional North America. Bioregional originally came up with the One Planet framework as a set of principles that aims at ensuring sustainable development takes a holistic view of communities, their stakeholders, resources, flora and fauna.
The principles include health and happiness of the inhabitants, equity and creation of a local economy, culture and community, land use and wildlife, sustainable water, local and sustainable food, sustainable materials, transport, zero waste, and zero carbon. Each principle is common to a One Planet community, and within them the major considerations are tailored with the help of proper stakeholder representation.
Take a look at the details of the project’s One Planet principles here.
So it is clear that the core values of Windmill’s business are around environmental sustainability, and healthy communities. But what is interesting is the effect of undertaking such a rigorous and ambitious certification on the economics of the $1Bn CAD project (roughly $750M USD). While understanding the profitability of an unfinished project is difficult, some information regarding sustainable developments is available on Zibi’s website to lure investors and owners alike.
According to their case study, residences in master-planned communities “command a 5 to 10% price premium over comparable ones,” and the homes are sold more quickly/with greater ease. With the transportation principles in the One Planet framework including the proximity of the project to public transportation, the site was also chosen due to the installation of new light rail transit nearby. Reuters says that Light Rail Transit stations can also increase the value of residences, by up to even 40%. LEED is not just about the environment either; the certification can increase the value of a home by up to 8%. Furthermore, the city of Ottawa has a policy that subsidizes 50% of the cost of rehabilitating brownfields, making the development on these lands even more attractive from a cost perspective for the developers.
So all signs point to profits, and these considerations have molded the way that Windmill chooses its sites, projects, and partners. If done well, impressive premiums are paid for real estate and commercial spaces titled “green”, while promoting walkability, bikeability, mixed land-use and a generally healthy community.
But is this system sustainable enough? The One Planet initiatives are ambitious and have built on LEED as a stepping stone to the creation of real change in environmental sustainability in the construction and real estate spaces. There is a consensus among leaders in the fields that there is always more that an organization, company, or project team can do to ensure their project is as clean and sustainable as possible, beyond certifications.
Take for example the Living Building Challenge, an even more rigorous certification for buildings, where the standards are not only net-zero energy, but net-positive. Furthermore, a building requires to “live” for 12 months to have enough data to be certified with. The material lists are much more rigorous as well, where materials like PVC are red-listed from construction entirely. Today, only 21 buildings are actually certified or partially certified to be “Living”, and only 6 have achieved 100% alignment with the certification. The issue is raising enough capital to build such a project, as up front costs are high, and finding contractors and developers that are willing to undertake the difficulties associated with their construction, material selection, etc. We are a ways away from Living Buildings everywhere.
But does it matter if the certifications are perfect yet? We know that any set of KPI’s can be built to make a project seem green, and of course we are in a period of learning to make the cleanest developments possible. But even if the Zibi community does not achieve a perfectly net-positive impact as per the Living Building Challenge, it would still be labeled the world’s most sustainable community, which is pushing the way that people are thinking about development everywhere.
One thing is for sure, and it’s that consumers are willing to pay a premium for well-planned sustainable residences, and today there is a strong case for creating a business (like Windmill) that can supply that demand.
Bibliography:
http://www.bioregional.com/oneplanetliving/
http://www.zibi.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Green_Community_2015.pdf
http://www.zibi.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/zibi-realestateappreciation-sm.pdf
http://www.ottawasun.com/2014/05/27/old-domtar-lands-a-big-brownfield
http://web.archive.org/web/20101122085344/http://ilbi.org:80/lbc/Standard-Documents/LBC2-0.pdf
Nice read! Finland and many Nordic countries have been developing sustainable communities for the past few years and have been successful. I wonder if this project has taken any insights from those countries, and whether it has had any success in implementing those?
Interested to hear of applications in diverse climates. The Middle East and Africa will continue to be growth centers, and they have radically different environmental profiles.