Enviro: Building: USA's green wave flowing to Canada in construction industry

In a recent column, Korky Koroluk pinpoints connection between govt-triggered green wave in USA with its gradual adoption north of the border in Canada (July 8,2k10).

U.S. green wave is moving north

It’s often possible to predict what will happen in Canada in a year or two or three by watching what’s happening in the United States now.

That’s why our construction industry should be aware of an executive order signed by U.S. President Barack Obama last October. The order sets out numerous green requirements for the U.S. federal government, requiring various government agencies to meet a number of energy, water and waste-reduction goals.

These apply only to federal buildings, of course, but the resulting impact for the construction industry could be profound since government construction is a trend-setter.

Building Information Management, or BIM, is an example of a new technology that was growing slowly until the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) made BIM compulsory for all government buildings. That meant that any company that wanted to bid on a government building had to have BIM capability.

BIM’s growth rate took off. And since more contractors were able to use BIM, more private-sector buyers of construction began to demand it as well.

That has meant more Canadian buyers aware of BIM and the advantages it offers, so its use is growing in Canada, as well — just not as fast.

Read more ...
You can expect something similar to happen as the U.S. government places more and more emphasis on green construction.
For example, there now must be a 26-per-cent improvement in water efficiency by 2020. New emphasis will be placed on sustainability requirements. And there is a net-zero-energy requirement for all federal building projects by 2030.

In a recent speech to members of the U.S. Green Building Council, GSA administrator Martha Johnson said among the organization’s objectives are helping help other federal agencies make greater strides in sustainability, identifying environmentally friendly initiatives, and increasing federal building performance.

The GSA, she said, is setting its sights on “eliminating the impact of the federal government on our natural environment.”
She outlined a number of areas in which the GSA could take a leading role, including cultivating green-oriented public-private partnerships. And it could use the federal government’s stock of buildings as a green proving ground for new sustainable-building and design technologies.

But she placed most emphasis on the search for a zero environmental footprint.

Both industry and the government, she said, had to be willing to fail, and to learn from and share those experiences, and in the process, work together to develop new tools.

All of this sounds great to anyone keen on environmental protection, and scary to anyone wary of increased government involvement in industry. So it’s important to understand that the executive order does not allow agencies to create new regulations governing the private sector. Indeed, it’s really just an extension of what various agencies already do for their internal operations, like the GSA’s internal requirement that their buildings meet the LEED Silver standard.

But although there may not be new rules, the executive order makes clear that the administration is going to require all agencies to enforce existing rules. And by encouraging the promotion of green public-private partnerships, the government is using a powerful lever on the way to sustainable buildings.

All this means that the American building construction industry will have to accommodate a lot of change just during the next 20 years.

Given the Canadian tendency to look southward for innovation, it seems likely that many of the things that are just beginning to happen in the U.S. will slowly find their way into Canadian practice.

Korky Koroluk is an Ottawa-based freelance writer. Send comments to editor@dailycommercialnews.com

Enviro: Canada: An action plan to reduce greenhouse gases and air pollution

Two weeks ago, Canada's Conservative minority-government introduced its EcoAction plan in a presentation by recently-appointed Minister of the Environment, John Baird. His submission launched new draft federal legislation on the environment and is entitled "Turning the Corner: An action plan to reduce greenhouse gases and air pollution" (Apr28,2k7). The intro page can be found on the govt's website.

The Government of Canada's plan to regulate both greenhouse gas emissions and air pollutants from industrial emitters will pave the way for a cleaner, healthier environment.

Released on April 26, 2007, the Action Plan to Reduce Greenhouse Gases and Air Pollution will:

* Impose mandatory targets on industry to achieve a goal of an absolute reduction of 150 megatonnes in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.

* Impose targets on industry so that air pollution from industry is cut in half by 2015.

* Regulate the fuel efficiency of cars and light duty trucks, beginning with the 2011 model year.

* Strengthen energy efficiency standards for a number of energy-using products, including light bulbs.

On May1,2k7, the govt released the following statement to the news media:

Actions by Canada's New Government to Reduce Greenhouse Gases and Air Pollution

May 1, 2007

Canada's New Government is committed to delivering real reductions on greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution.

Diverse and complementary measures announced to date include:

* The Regulatory Framework for Air Emissions, which imposes mandatory targets on industry and gives them access to a range of cost-effective options to meet the targets, including:
o a capped technology fund to help the Canadian industrial sector develop new solutions critical to reducing greenhouse gases;
o a domestic emissions trading system. We will also look at future linkages with emissions trading systems in the US, and possibly Mexico, with further international linkages to be explored over time;
o domestic offset credits to engage other sectors of the Canadian economy to make greenhouse gas reductions, and;
o access to the Clean Development Mechanism under the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

* Our Plan also:
o addresses emissions from transportation by regulating for the first time the fuel efficiency of cars and light duty trucks, beginning with the 2011 model year,
o strengthens energy efficiency standards for a number of energy-using products, including light bulbs, and
o recognizes the urgent need to take action to improve indoor air quality and commits to implement measures to do so.

* $1.5 billion to support to support environmental provincial and territorial projects, to reduce greenhouse gases and air pollution;

* $2 billion to support renewable fuel production;

North America > Canada (Enviro)

* 5% renewable fuels content in gasoline by 2010 and 2% renewable content in diesel fuel and heating oil by 2012 ;

* $2 billion for EcoEnergy Initiatives to help Canadians use energy more efficiently, boost renewable energy supplies and develop cleaner energy technologies;

* $1.3 billion for public transit;

* $100 million for EcoTransport Strategy for new initiatives in clean transportation;

* $36 million over the next two years for "scrappage" programs to retire older vehicles;

* Rebate of up to (+) $2,000 on fuel-efficient vehicles and levy of up to (-) $4,000 on vehicles that are fuel-inefficient;

* Tax credit for the purchase of monthly public transit passes;

* The formation of the EcoEnergy Carbon Capture and Storage Task Force to recommend the best ways for Canada to implement on a large scale this promising technology to capture carbon dioxide and store it deep underground; and

* $160 million over two years to offer performance-based rebates on new light duty vehicles.

Canada's New Government is also taking action to preserve Canada's natural heritage, strengthen the implementation of the Species at Risk Act, implement a new National Water Strategy and improve the enforcement of environmental protection laws.

The govt's plan has been severely criticized by all three opposition parties in the House of Commons (Libs, NDP, Bloc Quebecois), by Al Gore, and David Suzuki. So, the criticisms are better known than the plan itself.

One feature of the plan not clearly outlined above is the treatment of two industries. The first is the oil/gas industry in the zone of the Alberta Tar Sands where production willl increase by a factor of five (altho its market has been affected by the announcement of geological studies in Colorado, USA, which are said to hold enuff reserves to obesolesce US dependent on Middle East oil, the USA being a prime market for Albert gas and oil). The govt has in the plan a development effort to remove carbon dioxide emmissions from the product at the source in Alberta and pump it undergone into the empty holes left by extraction. Suzuki has come down very hard on this, but there is interest in the technics of proposal. However, even if feasible, affordable, and technically possible, the idea of storage of CO2 is as welcome in many quarters as is the storage of nuclear waste.

The second zone is located a world away (so to speak) in industrial Ontario, where the auto industry and its workforce are given delays regarding enforcement of the plan's features. Industry generally and the Canadian Auto Workers are pleased with the delays which give them an adjustment period in which Canada's contribution to greenhouse gases [GHG] will increase, rather than decrease. The govt argues that the plan's ambiguity results from balancing environmental concerns with the continuing health of the an economy, that over time can and will adjust. Of couse, Suzuki will have none of this.

Enviro: Canada: Why did Libs (Chretien, Martin, Stewart, Dion) not demand equal carbon-fuel constraints on China?

The irrepressible publisher of the China e-Lobby's email newsletter, JD Maguire offers some astute remarks on Communist China's now-leading role in worldwide pollution.

Whatever one may think of the Kyoto agreement, the fact that it exempts Communist China, has long been a chief argument of its critics against the deal. Proponents have argued that Communist China's emission levels wouldn't challenge America's for years to come.

Well, that line of argument has passed its best-by date, literally. New figures from the Communists themselves (of all people) have revealed that the United States will fall behind Communist China in carbon-dioxide emissions as early as this year. In fact, emissions from Communist China have nearly doubled since 2001 (San Francisco Chronicle). Or, to put it another way, "China's greenhouse gas emissions have recently been growing by a total amount much greater than that of all industrialized nations put together."

Even those who fervently believe in man-made global warming must now agree that Kyoto is useless without including what will soon be the largest carbon emitter on the planet. All it will do is allow the Communists to continue to rapidly overdevelop, destroy its ecology, build up its military, and arm or otherwise aid terrorists without any qualms while the free world geopolitically handicaps itself.

I checked out the live-links with which Maquire documents his remarks. In the SanFransisco Chronicle, Robert Collier, "A Warming World: China about to pass U.S. as world's top generator of greenhouse gases" (Mar6,2k7).

Far more than previously acknowledged, the battle against global warming will be won or lost in China, even more so than in the West, new data show.

A report released last week by Beijing authorities indicated that as its economy continues to expand at a red-hot pace, China is highly likely to overtake the United States this year or in 2008 as the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases.

This information, along with data from the International Energy Agency, the Paris-based alliance of oil importing nations, also revealed that China's greenhouse gas emissions have recently been growing by a total amount much greater than that of all industrialized nations put together.

"The magnitude of what's happening in China threatens to wipe out what's happening internationally," said David Fridley, leader of the China Energy Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

"Today's global warming problem has been caused mainly by us in the West, with the cumulative (carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases) in the atmosphere, but China is contributing to the global warming problem of tomorrow."

New statistics released in Beijing on Wednesday by China's National Bureau of Statistics show that China's consumption of fossil fuels rose in 2006 by 9.3 percent, about the same rate as in previous years -- and about eight times higher than the U.S. increase of 1.2 percent.

While China's total greenhouse gas emissions were only 42 percent of the U.S. level in 2001, they had soared to an estimated 97 percent of the American level by 2006.

Maguire also puts us on to a telltale graph accompanying Collier's article but on another page. The graph makes clear that China has well-surpassed Europe, has rapidly risen to American levels, and is now a rapid projectile that is moving without check either to protect its people, air, water, and cities; but is becoming a menace to the whole world.

Meantime, Japan has reached equilibrium and is, for the good of the whole world, manufacturing hybrid-fuelled battery-driven cars that are slowly gaining increased public favour there. While that be true, India which was close behind Japan in the production of carbon-increasive fuel emissions, now without equilibrium it has surpassed Japan on India's upward climb on the chart. But this should be clear, neither Japan nor India come near to producing what Europe, USA, and most/worst of all China are doing. The pace and time factors of China's climb threaten the world's air and water--even if all the other countries mentioned manage to reduce their carbon-incresive emissions to Zero!

Now, Canada doesn't even appear on the lists. However, while Canada under the Liberal Party govts of the last 40 years has slaveringly touted among its own entrepreneurs and abroad thru "trade missions" sponsored mass siginings of Canada/China business deals and investments, became signatory to the Kyoto Protocols without requiring its dubious trade partner China to undergo the same restrictions required of all signers to reduce carbon-increasive emissions. China should have had its feet held to the fire with all the rest of the signers. Instead, Canada was complicit in China's carte blance, free pass, whatever you may wish to call it. This lack of analysis and fores+t regarding China, was the result of extremely poor plannning on the part of the Liberal government, its prime ministers Chretien and Martin, and its environment ministers Stewart and Dion (who is now leader of the Fed Libs). In truth, Dion never cared for the environment and he never cared about either China's or Canada's meeting the targets of the Kyoto Protocol. Allowing China to go scot-free was a kind of Munich that his party's China boosterism foisted on the Canadian people thru short-term thinking. It was a most astounding betrayal of environment.

Dion now talks grandiosely about his commitment to longterm planning, but he's all along been part of unleashing China's rapid-increase worldwide lead in destroying the global human heritage of air and water. He was a cabinet minister of a govt which signed on to giving China a free hand, because he and his party had no longterm plan; now China is repaying Canada by making our own signing of Kyoto irrelevant to the world's sink into deep environmental sickness.

Whether Stephen Harper's minority Conservative govt will make a really positive difference for environmental concerns in Canada longterm (given that any plan from Harper will have to be effective in the huge quintupling of the Alberta oil fields and refining of tar and other impurities out the carbon-increasive oil products, consequently thereby increasing the longevity of carbon emissions from traditional autos [etc]) on Canada's roads--all that remains to be seen.

But Stephane Dion has had his chance. He has proved a lousy steward of the environment, now that the Liberal past is exposed for lack of longterm planning inherent in its signing on to Kyoto while exempting China, all to the world's longterm extreme damage. Dion should not be rewarded for this perfidy by being elected Prime Minister.

Environment: Canada: Former minister explains why Lib Party and present party leader Dion did nothing for 13 years to backup Kyoto signature

Reporter for Toronto's Globe & Mail Bill Curry supplies an ins+t into the gap prevailing hitehrto in the public's understanding of why the Liberal govt did nothing for 13 years to backup its signing Canada onto the Kyoto Protocol on the environment. "Dion did not support Kyoto efforts, former environment minister says" (Mar8,2k7).

OTTAWA — Christine Stewart, who was the Liberal environment minister when Canada signed the Kyoto agreement in 1997, said none of her cabinet colleagues -- including current party leader Stéphane Dion -- supported her efforts to put a real plan in place to meet its ambitious targets.

In an interview with The Globe and Mail yesterday, Ms. Stewart said she told her colleagues that Kyoto would require tough action from the provinces because they control the main sources of greenhouse gases, such as power plants and natural resources. But the provinces objected and their opposition was reflected in cabinet by Mr. Dion, who was then intergovernmental affairs minister, she said.

"Stéphane Dion was the minister of intergovernmental affairs and the whole issue [of Kyoto] was creating horrible consternation among the provinces," she recalled. "Frankly, the environment wasn't an intergovernmental topic that our government wanted to expend their opportunity on. They had to worry more about getting a health agreement with the provinces or financial issues and we couldn't get [the provinces] angry and all upset about the environment.

"That was [Mr. Dion's] role. 'Let's let this one lay low.' It was never said in so many words. I think what I am saying is he wasn't against [Kyoto], but he was not a champion. But then he wasn't unique. If you can find a champion [in that Liberal cabinet], let me know," she said.

Ms. Stewart was environment minister from 1997 to 1999 and has kept a low profile since retiring from public life before the 2000 election.

Her comments are similar to those expressed recently by Eddie Goldenberg, who was the senior adviser to former prime minister Jean Chrétien. In a speech, Mr. Goldenberg said neither the public nor the government was ready for the tough measures Kyoto required.

Mr. Dion has made the Kyoto Protocol a central part of his political persona, naming his dog Kyoto and supporting a controversial private member's bill that would enforce the accord's targets on the Conservative government.

In an interview, Mr. Dion said he was not surprised by Ms. Stewart's comments because there is always a natural tension between environment ministers and their cabinet colleagues.

Mr. Dion said he was working hard to find a climate change plan that could be supported by the provinces and Ms. Stewart was likely frustrated by the time it took to find consensus. He said he ultimately got the provinces to agree to a joint climate fund to pay for climate-change projects. Prime Minister Stephen Harper is simply reannouncing the result of that work in the Liberal cabinet, Mr. Dion said.

"I was trying to find a way to keep [the provinces] in the tent and to work with them," he said. "I needed them to find a way to help Christine, and after, David [Anderson], to succeed in working with the provinces."

Environment Minister John Baird said there is a pattern of key Liberals saying there was a lack of commitment when the Liberals signed Kyoto.

"Dion has a huge credibility gap and he has created it himself," Mr. Baird said in a telephone interview. "If we had started back in 1997, do you know how easy it would have been to make Kyoto? The amount of megatonne reductions compared to what we're dealing with today? I mean, it's astounding."

Ms. Stewart is aware her comments will likely be used by Conservatives for political advantage, but she is no fan of the current government. Ms. Stewart said she is happy that her Liberal Party eventually made climate change a priority. She also fumes at comments from Conservatives, such as Mr. Baird, who say Canada's Kyoto targets are impossibly out of reach.

"It drives me crazy to hear that kind of language," she said. "The emphasis is always on what we can't do and the high cost and all the negatives, rather than, 'This is a serious issue. The costs and risks of not doing something about this issue are immense.' "

Stephane Dion begins to look more and more duplicitous, down to his dog he named "Kyoto." I hope he's picking up the canine poop better than he pooped around and neglected to scoop on the Protocols, which have become his priority only lately, some 13 years after the event.

While I'm at it, I want to mention a set of mp3 downloads from the McLaurin Institute's recent Conference on Christianity and the environment. Go to Steve Bishop's excellent blog An Accidental Blog and navigate from there.

EU meets to forge new green policy (Mar8,2k7) CNN. Germany's Christian Democratic Chancellor, Angela Merkel, plans to pressure the USA to sign the Kyoto Protocol. Canada has already done so, but will still be targetted in the German campaign which will try to get all members of the G-8 Summit on board, when it meets in June.