Studies have shown that Leadership in Environmental and Energy Design (LEED) office construction can deliver higher lease rates and stronger tenant retention.
Combined with long-term energy savings, municipal prodding and the cachet of being seen to be at the cutting edge of architecture, that payoff has triggered groundbreaking innovation in Vancouver office towers.
“We are long-term investors, and we believe that everybody has to go this way,” said SwissReal Group CEO Franz Gehriger.
Swiss RealGroup is building the Exchange office tower on Howe Street, where a healthy portion of the $200 million budget is dedicated to making the 31-storey tower the first in B.C. to achieve the pinnacle LEED Platinum certification.
The Exchange will feature on-site waste-water treatment, energy consumption at a rate about half that of similar towers and a high-efficiency heating, cooling and ventilation system. But it's the innovative curtain wall that will set a new standard in Vancouver.
Designed by Swiss architect Harry Grugger with Iredale Group Architecture in Vancouver, the 400,000-square-foot skyscraper will be the first in Canada to be encased in a triple-pane curtain wall. Grugger is best known for the 2012 Beijing Summer Olympic Games' “Bird's Nest” stadium.
Each of the insulated window panels is five feet wide with the largest units stretching to a height of nine feet.
Peter Hildebrand, who worked on the glazing design with Vancouver's RDH Building Engineering, said the glass will help achieve a 35% reduction in energy use and an 85% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions when compared with a conventional office tower of the same size with standard double-pane windows.
In another first, the neighbouring 1929 vintage Old Stock Exchange Building, which forms part of the new tower, will be renovated and restored as part of the development. It will be Canada's first LEED Platinum heritage conversion.
A green retrofit of another old office building is also aimed at achieving LEED certification – by sinking a series of 400-foot-deep shafts beneath the 24-year-old, 17-storey Pacific Centre tower at 777 Dunsmuir Street.
The goal, according to developer Cadillac Fairview, is the first retrofit of a Canadian office tower with a geoexchange system.
Geoexchange effectively uses the earth as an energy bank. It deposits energy recovered when cooling a building in the ground for later use when the building requires heat.
This month, Vancouver-based Fenix Energy Ltd. set up rigs in the lowest parkade at the base of the tower and began drilling 30 boreholes to a depth equal to a 30-storey tower.
Cadillac Fairview is investing $2 million in the retrofit, which will have a payback of eight to 10 years and reduce energy consumption by 60%, said Ultan Kampff, general manager of Pacific Centre for Cadillac Fairview.
Because heat will be available for use throughout Pacific Centre retail space and offices – reducing its reliance on natural-gas-powered boilers – carbon emissions will also drop 85%.
