Toronto and its Towers

 

The GTA has one of the biggest concentrations of high-rise towers in North America. Built during the construction hey-day of the 50s, 60s and 70s, at a time when energy costs were negligible, they are also energy hogs.

Turns out, those same towers can be turned into the most energy-efficient buildings in the world. New retrofitting technology, including something called "re-skinning" - creating a new thermal barrier by re-cladding aging high-rises with new materials, from solar panels to "media" walls - could transform Toronto's high-rise building stock.

In the middle of a very deep recession, Toronto and the GTA are being positioned to become the retrofit capital of North America.

A timely opportunity

To Ron Dembo, founder of Zerofootprint,
a nonprofit that works with businesses to reduce their carbon footprint, the timing couldn't be better, given that so many of Ontario's old industries are struggling.

"We have a manufacturing sector that knows how to manufacture except it's dying," says Dembo. "You've got a car industry that's doing very poorly that knows how to build complex machines. You've got a very good design sector, a very good IT sector, you've got a very good construction sector. We've got the perfect storm."

He smiles. "We could be the 'skinners' of all time. We could reskin every city. And this is a huge industry."

Zerofootprint is launching an international re-skinning competition on May 11th - to dramatically re-skin one of Toronto's aging high-rises.

Buildings are a looming problem

In our series, Green Grows Up, we're dismantling a couple of myths about waste and CO₂ emissions. Did you know that we produce far more waste at work than we do at home?

Even though we spend a lot of time worrying about blue boxes, the truth is that roughly two-thirds of our total waste comes from our workplaces, most of which goes directly to landfill.

Same with CO₂ emissions. Our buildings - the city's built space - are responsible for almost 54 per cent of all CO₂ emissions, far more than our personal vehicles, which are responsible for about 21 per cent of CO₂ emissions.

Find out more about the sources of C0₂e in Toronto from our interactive graph.

Picking up where the auto industry left off?

David Pecaut, co-chair of the the Toronto City Summit Alliance,
a coalition of leaders from Toronto's business, public and social services sectors, says that when it comes to job creation, the retrofitting industry could rival the auto industry in its prime.

The Summit Alliance is convening tenants and landlords of commercial properties to do energy audits and work out new leasing agreements - an important tool to attract financing.

All six of Canada's major banks are part of the Greening Greater Toronto campaign. "The biggest tenants in the GTA are the Ontario government, followed by the Royal Bank, followed by the federal government, followed by TD Bank," says Pecaut.

Pecaut says the goals are ambitious: to retrofit 8 per cent of Toronto's commercial building stock each year, creating 5,000 new jobs every year.

"Now with the big players signing on, there's a lot of leverage to work with commercial businesses across the GTA."

A worldwide enterprise

Re-skinning projects are underway from Ethiopia to Edinburgh. View our photogallery of projects.

Audio and Transcripts

More than skin deep

Buildings are being re-skinned all over the world.

Check out our photogallery for a variety of designs and some lessons learned from early attempts at re-skinning.