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.
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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 >>
