Zero-Carbon Buildings
Vancouver City Has A Goal For All New Buildings To Be Zero-Emissions By 2030
RRB Is Exceeding This Goal By Including Zero-Carbon Building Measures
What Is A Zero-Emission Building?
A Zero-Emission Building Is Highly Energy Efficient And From Cradle To Grave Its Emission Footprint Equals Zero Or Less
RRB commits to revolutionizing community landscapes through affordable housing solutions that uphold Zero-Emission standards and sustainable development. Utilizing advanced construction techniques and energy-efficient systems, we exceed Canada’s climate goals to ensure a future. Collaborating with global capital partners, researchers, technologists, community members, government leaders, and housing leaders, we focus on fostering community growth with social equity to maintain Zero-Emission standards in every project.
RRB uses Zero-Emission Building (ZEB) and Zero Carbon Building (ZCB) measures, Nature-based Solutions (NbS), and social indicators of health, examples of research-informed planning, design, construction and maintenance, so the economy, social environment, and natural environment are equitable.
Life-Cycle Assessment
Life cycle assessment (LCA) estimates the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere over a product’s entire life-span, from resource extraction to landfill and decomposition at its end of life. LCA is a rigorous methodological technique which measures embodied and operational carbon to rationalize material selection toward ‘green’ choices.
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for a building (whole-building LCA), measures all the flows between a building and nature over its lifetime and then estimates the resulting impacts on air, land, and water.
Vancouver City Council has set a target of reducing embodied emissions by 40% by 2030 as part of their declaration of a climate emergency action plan.
The cradle-to-grave lifetime of a building includes manufacturing and transporting of construction materials, the process of construction, a long phase of building occupancy and maintenance, demolition, and removal of waste materials. Resources are consumed and emissions created during every life phase.
Community Participation
With an implementation plan indicating technical details, and an investment plan and actions to follow, including maintenance and monitoring involving the community, creating links between the different sectors, sustainability is more secure. In working to strengthen urban resilience, NbS and participatory governance are essential. For urban resilience to be successful, inclusion, recognition of local knowledge, community empowerment, and accountability are necessary.
Benefits of Green Infrastructure
Broader benefits for biodiversity, communities, and the local economy are produced as a result. Working with nature is a cost-effective approach to coordinate climate change adaptation while strengthening urban resilience. These applications are not limited to specific treatments regardless of location, geography, or land use type.
Nature-based Solutions
Before construction begins there are complex planning and design decisions to make to protect, manage, and restore ecosystems using green infrastructure. Planning and design decisions to preserve ecological features like waterways, vegetation, and other natural features, and the ozone, help abate air and water pollution.
What is Green Infrastructure?
Green infrastructure may be broadly defined as interconnected networks of natural and engineered green space that provide various ecosystem services. The application of green infrastructure has been categorized into five areas: green roofs, green walls, urban vegetation and forestry, urban agriculture systems, and tree-based intercropping systems (Anderson, V. & Gough, W., 2020). Green roofs and green walls, for example, remove air pollutants including ozone, nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter, create green space, mitigate urban heat island effect, and cool the environment.
Current Global Greenhouse Gas Context
According to the Climate Change 2023 Synthesis Report (IPCC, 2023):
Limiting human-caused global warming to a specific level requires limiting cumulative CO2 emissions, reaching at least net zero CO2 emissions, along with strong reductions in other greenhouse gas emissions.
All global modelled pathways that limit warming to 1.5°C (>50%) with no or limited overshoot, and those that limit warming to 2°C (>67%), involve rapid and deep and, in most cases, immediate greenhouse gas emissions reductions in all sectors this decade. Global net zero CO2 emissions are reached for these pathway categories, in the early 2050s and around the early 2070s, respectively.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has verified the higher temperatures, rising sea level and more extreme weather events (record heat and cold waves, more violent precipitation and hurricanes) are caused by a dramatic increase of heat-trapping greenhouse gases (GHG).
Climate change is a threat to human well-being and planetary health. There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all. Climate resilient development integrates adaptation and mitigation to advance sustainable development for all, and is enabled by increased international cooperation including improved access to adequate financial resources, particularly for vulnerable regions, sectors and groups.
Tragedy can be averted if the world holds its GHG production constant, even with its projected population growth.
Urban transitions that offer benefits for mitigation, adaptation, human health and wellbeing, ecosystem services, and vulnerability reduction for low-income communities are fostered by inclusive long-term planning that takes an integrated approach to physical, natural and social infrastructure.
Green and blue infrastructure supports carbon uptake and storage and either singly or when combined with grey infrastructure can reduce energy use and risk from extreme events such as heatwaves, flooding, heavy precipitation and droughts, while generating co-benefits for health, well-being and livelihoods.