La Jolla Commons II — CoStar Group
The13-story La Jolla Commons II office building, under construction in the University Towne Centre area, will be the largest "net-zero" energy building in the U.S., according to its developer, the Hines real estate firm.
The 415,000-square-foot building at 4707 Executive Drive was designed by AECOM and is being built by Whiting-Turner Contracting. Hines is developing the project in partnership with J.P. Morgan Asset Management.
Construction began in April and is expected to be completed in April 2014.
To achieve zero net energy use, Hines is employing directed biogas and onsite fuel cells. Bloom Energy's cells will generate a projected 5 million kilowatts of electricity annually, equivalent to about 1,000 homes. READ MORE >>
Buildings that generate all their own energy on site are all the rage these days. But which net zero building is the best? The Architecture At Zero 2012 competition — hosted by Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) and AIA San Francisco, in collaboration with UC Merced — aimed to find out, and now the winners have been announced. READ MORE >>
Image: Architecture at Zero 2012
Painters Hall, community building for Salem's Pringle Creek. (© 2010 Pringle Creek Community)
Painters Hall in Salem, Ore. and IDeAs Z2 Design Facility in San Jose, Calif., have been awarded third-party certification, just five months after the International Living Future Institute launched the Net Zero Energy Building Certification option
Two projects, both existing building retrofits, have completed the first full set of third-party audits for Net Zero Energy Building Certification from the International Living Future Institute.
© 2010 Pringle Creek
Painters Hall, a community building in the Pringle Creek community in Salem, Ore., and IDeAs Z2 Design Facility, an office building for Integrated Design Associates in San Jose, Calif., each earned certification as net zero energy buildings. Painters Hall also achieved ‘Petal Recognition’ under the Living Building Challenge.
Net Zero Energy Building Certification is linked to the Living Building Challenge, widely considered to be the world’s most stringent and progressive green building program. As with the Living Building Challenge, certification is based on actual performance rather than modeled outcomes. Buildings must be operational for at least 12 consecutive months prior to evaluation. To earn Net Zero Energy Building Certification, three of the Living Building Challenge’s 20 Imperatives must be met completely, and elements of two others are included.
“With recent research and news reports putting the net zero energy market at more than $1 trillion by 2035, third-party certification is critical. Until now, it’s been impossible to know if projects claiming to be net zero are performing as expected,” says Jason F. McLennan, the Institute’s CEO. “Our sincere hope is that those who pursue the net zero energy path seek to further transform the industry -- and the world – by pursuing Living Building Challenge certification as the next logical step in project evolution. The Painters Hall project exemplifies this effort.”
The developers of Pringle Creek Community converted an 80-year-old existing building into an ecologically and socially progressive community center within the 32-acre mixed-use redevelopment in Salem. A 20.2kw rooftop array of solar panels produces enough energy for the building’s needs. The project achieved the Energy, Equity, and Beauty Petals of the Living Building Challenge. The Net Zero Energy Building Certification requirements are encompassed within these petals.
The Ideas Z2 Facility transformed a U.S. Bank building constructed in the 1960s. It is designed to meet 100 percent of its net energy requirements using renewable energy from photovoltaics. The building has a net-metered rooftop photovoltaic system that provides enough electricity for the building’s needs.
Find out more about Net Zero Energy Building Certification and how to get started by visiting www.living-future.org/netzero. Case studies can be found at https://ilbi.org/lbc/casestudies
IDeAs Z2 Design Facility, San Jose, California
PHOTO: Globe and Mail
By Erica Ruth Kelly
Since 1990, the Friends of the Environment Foundation at Toronto-Dominion Bank has helped fund more than 19,000 environmental projects with the aim of helping Canadian communities to reduce, reuse and recycle. Recently, TD added another “r” to this list: renovation.
In October, the bank unveiled a newly renovated branch in London, Ont., that is designed to produce as much energy as it uses. The solar panels at the retrofitted building will generate more than 100,000 kilowatt-hours of green electricity, the bank says.
The renovation follows TD’s construction of a new branch in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., which it says is the first ever “net-zero energy” building of its size in the retail world. Developing this branch, which has been open for five months, was an easy decision, says Roger Johnson, TD’s senior vice-president of enterprise real estate, since the bank had sufficient land to put the solar array on, and the state gets plenty of sunshine.
...
The zero-energy principle is becoming more practical as traditional fossil fuels become more expensive, says architect Paul Dowsett, a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) accredited principal at Sustainable.TO, a Toronto firm dedicated to green design. The renovation should protect the building from the future rising costs of energy, he says. READ MORE >>
By Dakotah Bertsch
John “Bill” Taylor, ASLA, of Carol R. Johnson Associates, and Mark Walsh-Cooke and Tom Kennedy of Arup, gave a talk on “The Next Generation of Net-Zero Park Design” at the 2011 ASLA annual meeting.
Problem: the earth’s resources are finite. The amount of usable freshwater, air, and, of course, oil, make up a very small amount of the planet. And, with the population growing, scarcity is bound to increase. Complicating matters, climate change is real. We will continue to see more flood events as the amount of rain is concentrated in fewer, stronger storms. More and more, our lives will be interrupted by unpredictable weather patterns. Tom Kennedy with Arup asked, “Where do we draw the line?”
“Net-zero” parks may be part of a global effort to deal with these changes. Bill Taylor, a landscape architect with Carol R. Johnson Associates, said that “the next generation of parks will be part of a massive urban and regional retrofitting.” Net-zero is a term used to quantify sustainability by paying close attention to a project’s impacts and resource consumption – usually in terms of water, carbon, and energy. When it comes to designing net-zero parks, however, there are more questions than answers. How is net-zero defined? According to Kennedy, net-zero is a lot like the term “sustainability” in that there are almost as many definitions for it as there are references to it. For landscape purposes, should net-zero refer to operational or lifetime costs? Does it involve offsetting carbon or energy expenditures? Does it consider the carbon impact of deliveries made to the site, or of importing water? ”Net-zero is not really well defined yet,” said Kennedy. He proposes that while the definition is flexible, one should decide on their own definition of net-zero early on in a project’s lifespan. READ MORE >>
via dirt.asla.org
Socialize