The Ottawa Paramedic Service headquarters is Ottawa's first LEED-certified structure. The 'smart building' employs a number of conservation measures, such as motion sensors to control lighting, low-flow water fixtures, and high-efficiency boilers, pumps and fans. (Fred Chartrand/Canadian Press)

A new form of convergence is coming from unexpected quarters: green sensibilities are combining with high-tech to create intelligent buildings.

In the past, "futuristic" building automation (BA) systems were envisioned as being high-tech servants that would react to voice commands to open doors or allow people to activate their hot tubs remotely. These things are possible today, but vendors have found little appetite for such luxury features in the real world.

Skyrocketing energy prices, however, are now fuelling a drive to infuse buildings with the intelligence needed to react to environmental changes and boost energy efficiency.

Most office buildings today are "dumb" because they use archaic environmental systems. One of the issues is that for years, BA systems used to control lighting, temperature and ventilation have chugged away as proprietary, standalone systems buried in the bowels of commercial towers. Integrating BA systems into central networks so they can talk and interact with each other could eliminate a lot of wasted energy, according to building designers.

Standalone BA systems often work against each other, explains Ron Zimmer, president of the Ottawa-based Continental Automated Buildings Association (CABA). Lighting systems, for example, are major energy hogs. About 70 per cent of the energy they consume is generated as heat, not light — which is the last thing you want in summer, as air conditioning systems will kick in to cool the environment, thus wasting yet more energy. Simply connecting lighting and heating, ventilation and air-condition (HVAC) systems to an IT management system that optimizes the two can cut energy costs by a third, he says.

This kind of simple integration of environmental systems in a structure is one thing, but next-generation features that used to be found only in the glittering towers of Dubai and Tokyo are also starting to show up in Canada. Telus Corp., Honeywell Canada and the Royal Bank of Canada are just some of the companies erecting office buildings that have even more sophisticated technology built in.

Telus, for example, will enable staff to access building functions with their BlackBerries and cellphones in its new Toronto tower. People can check live images of the parking garage pulled from surveillance video cameras before they enter the parking area, and activate lighting and environmental systems in their workspaces remotely with their handhelds, says architect Dermot Sweeny.

Green is in

While a high-tech building isn't necessarily green, or vice-versa, the concepts overlap in design and imagination. Green features such as energy efficiency are more easily managed with integrated systems, says Claude Boudriau, global program manager at BA vendor Honeywell International's Montréal office.

"Interestingly, the term 'intelligent building' is used for both green and high-tech buildings," he says. "And companies that want to be seen as environmentally friendly are often also more technologically advanced."

One example of this overlap is Toronto's MaRS Discovery District, which won the 2006 Intelligent Building of the Year award for its inventive use of technology. The innovation centre integrates an array of systems — BA, security, telephony, audio-visual, broadcast, and digital signage — all riding on one monster network.

High-tech features such as digital signs that displays news alerts in lobbies may excite techies, but environmental advancements are the things driving demand for more intelligent buildings, says Randal Froebelius, MaRS' property manager.

"Any major tenant looking for leasing space nowadays expects it to be LEED-certified," he says, referring to the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design system for rating green buildings, which is becoming the de facto standard for new commercial developments.

At MaRS, for example, a tenant's environmental preferences and energy consumption can be programmed, tracked and charged right down to the cubicle level.

"This ensures tenants are paying for their actual costs instead of spreading them over the building, which also encourages conservation," says Froebelius.

Intelligent building design can have salutary effects on a business's bottom line. Of the total costs incurred during an average building's 50-year lifespan, about 50 per cent are operating costs, says Zimmer.

Fully integrated BA systems can cut those operating costs by half, thereby increasing the value of the building, says Boudriau. Research also suggests tenant retention rates are about 4 per cent higher in intelligent buildings. People are more satisfied and productive when they have control over their environment and pervasive technology at their fingertips — and more willing to pay premium rental rates.

Another related trend promises even bigger economies of scale: Networking intelligent buildings to central operating centres.

"Cisco Systems is a leader in this space, with more than 400 buildings worldwide managed by a handful of operating centres covering energy management, security and other systems," says Zimmer. "It's like creating a Kennedy Space Centre for global corporations."

Intelligent design, from the ground up

Peter Busby, chairman of the Vancouver-based Canada Green Building Council (CGBC), sounds a cautionary note about excessive emphasis on technology. He says networks are just part of the equation — a truly efficient building also needs to be designed with some green fundamentals in mind.

"Integrated BA systems are supportive of a green building strategy, but they're not central to it," he says. "You can have a better degree of control if they're tied to occupancy sensors, lighting systems and so on. But they don't save energy by themselves — they just assist in moving energy around."

The best examples of green buildings are aboriginal structures such as pit houses, tents and igloos where intelligent use of heat, light and ventilation is an inherent part of the design, says Busby. "They were all made of the earth without machinery and returned to the earth."

The CGBC is involved in promoting green design principles and educating architects, engineers and builders. "We've seen significant uptake in the last four years," he says. "We now have about 40,000 members, and there are 700 buildings across Canada registered to various levels of LEED certification."

While intelligent building design is an essential feature in new developments, the huge number of older "dumb" buildings out there is a headache — and a potential energy-saving opportunity for communities.

"Almost 95 percent of Canada's buildings built since the sixties are poor performers and need to be upgraded," Busby says.

The downtown cores of major Canadian cities are crowded with energy-wasting towers that will likely be around for many decades. They violate many fundamental energy-conserving design principles.

"They have floor-to-ceiling glass unprotected from sunshine, which means you have to pump up the volume to get air conditioning into spaces," he says. "These buildings are just piles of mechanical equipment guzzling energy to fix bad decisions made around the perimeter."

Technology is neither the problem nor the solution for these older structures, he says. "The problem is the way they're designed and not the BA systems that run them."

In designing for energy conservation, a top priority is to get the orientation right, because different facades — facing north, south and other directions — require different strategies to deal with sunlight and heat loss. There's also the issue of building a proper "envelope" to insulate the building.

"I'm opposed to the idea that we should put more machines in buildings to solve problems," Busby says.

"I think we should spend less on equipment. If buildings are designed properly, we can halve the costs of systems, because you won't need big boilers, chillers, fans and lights. We have to build a lot smarter so buildings perform passively, inherently better than they do now."

The author is a Toronto-based freelance writer.

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