Developers are hard to trust in a city where so many huge fortunes have been made in real estate development and speculation.
When I was a city politician allocating development rights, I always saw part of my job as protecting the public interest against change-resistant developers who wanted it all. So many did so well it was hard to know who to believe when they said we were asking for too many public contributions or too many green building standards.
Recently I had a chance to hear their unvarnished assessments of regulatory demands in a different setting – as facilitator of a focus group for Terasen, looking at how Terasen could help developers with their new energy system challenges. All the region’s biggest developers were around the table, and their message, although familiar, had a more desperate ring than what I had heard before.
While political policy-makers set goals based on societal needs like lowering greenhouse gas emissions (zero-carbon buildings in the city of Vancouver by 2020, for example), developers have to put the nuts and bolts together and sell the results to customers. That’s a lot different – and a lot harder – than selling green goals to voters.
Financially-struggling first-time condo buyers want reliable heat at the lowest cost. Few have any interest in paying more so the city can be the Greenest Place Anywhere. But that, ironically, is what’s happening too often in this awkward period of shifting to a lower-carbon future. Look at the impact of unpredictably high sustainability compliance costs on Millennium Water’s developer.
Most of the developers were completely at sea trying to figure out the best energy system to comply with a blizzard of changes coming from different municipalities, provincial carbon-reduction policies, building codes and last-minute “suggestions” at rezoning hearings.
LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is now just a starting point. Zero-carbon buildings need a whole new, still unknown approach. Based on what research?
Long-term data on how new systems perform is still a mystery to these developers.
Hydronics – circulating water to heat and cool – seems to be the way to go, because the heat source can be energy-agnostic.
But district energy that circulates water through a whole neighbourhood doesn’t work in less-dense suburbs or infill projects. What are they supposed to do?
“Does anyone know how to cope with a geothermal pipe break in an earthquake?” someone asked.
One major failure like that and a development company’s reputation is in tatters.
Maintenance of new-fangled systems is a major contributor to the “brain damage” these practitioners are suffering as they struggle to contain liability risks. Few have the time, money or expertise to properly educate property managers, strata councils and individual condo owners on how to operate elaborate new heating and cooling systems.
One serious operating lapse and the savings go out the window and lawsuits come in the door. Millennium’s fancy mobile digital readout meters can reduce energy use by 30%, but at $3,000 each they’re unaffordable. And do you take a chance with a super new technology when only three people in the province know how to service it?
But wait, said one developer, what exactly is wrong with old-school, no-leak, simple, cheap, proven electric baseboard heat if our hydro power is green? Do all these new heat-exchange systems even make economic sense in a mild climate with cheap, green electricity?
Greener energy is our future, for reasons bigger than housing affordability in the Lower Mainland. But the tough job of making it work in real life can’t be the entire responsibility of developers financing bleeding- edge research on the backs of unhappy homebuyers.
Cities have to stay in close touch with – and listen to – the practitioners struggling to make this work. If we get it right, the upside is huge.