A study released by the financial think tank yesterday ranks Canada 11th among the world’s 17 wealthiest nations for 2008, falling behind Norway, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Austria but ahead of Belgium, Germany and Japan.

Canada scored good grades for inflation and gross domestic product growth, but earned mediocre Cs in other key areas such as labour productivity, income per capita and unemployment.

‘NOT BAD NEWS’

“Given the current context, it’s not bad news,” said Glen Hodgson, senior vice-president and chief economist for the board. “In the short term it’s not bad, but don’t be complacent.

“We shouldn’t be satisfied to see our economy crawl back to 2% growth next year. There’s more we can do to create wealth in Canada rather than relying on a cheap dollar or rising commodity prices.”

Hodgson said Canada’s standing is based not on its ties to the U.S., but on domestic policy on productivity, labour markets and foreign investments. Canada could boost its showing with a national productivity strategy to become a more innovative economy, he said.

Norway rose to the top from third spot in the international report card, leading the group in income per capita and employment. Ireland took a big tumble, falling to the bottom from its previous top spot as it reels from a meltdown in the construction sector and real estate market.

Hodgson said the federal government helped buoy the economy with billions of dollars in stimulus spending, but called for a concrete plan to climb out of deficit as soon as the economy rebounds.

Alberta and the western provinces will clear the red ink relatively fast, but Ontario will find it tougher to balance the books and could grapple with a structural, long-term deficit, he predicted.

http://www.winnipegsun.com/news/canada/2009/07/07/10046156-sun.html

reviewed by Moishe Alexander, CFC Canadian Funding Corp CEO

 
Huw Roberts spoke about Bentley’s position in the markets they serve: in building performance their global business earns 56 percent revenues internationally, and 44 percent from North America. The software is used by 90 percent of the top 500 firms in the world, according to Roberts, and the company has approximately 2800 colleagues in 50 countries, with revenues reported for 2008 at over $500 million, Moishe Alexander, CFC CEO says.

In previous articles on sustainable design some of the following statistics have been cited: the fact that in the U.S., the U.S. Energy Commission reports that buildings account for the majority of energy usage. Buildings account for 39 percent of energy use, 39 percent of carbon dioxide emissions, 65 percent waste and 71 percent of electricity consumption.
In addition building owners are putting increasing demand on the building industry to deliver high performance buildings.

The National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS) defines the criteria for such buildings in the following categories: cost effectiveness, safety and security, aesthetics, sustainability, historic preservation, accessibility, productivity and functionality.

In the webcast Bentley focused on the “sustainability criteria.” As the U.S. Green Building Council LEED program is becoming the standard by which we measure sustainability in buildings in the U.S., it is rapidly emerging as a reference standard around the world. It defines the sustainability of buildings in these five criteria: sustainable sites, indoor and environmental quality, energy and atmosphere, water efficiency and material resources. Bentley focused on energy and atmosphere and indoor environmental quality for this webcast.

Roberts noted that in the UK, through BREEM, the industry has been demanding more energy efficient and higher environmental quality for many years. “This is probably the world’s most demanding environment for high performance energy efficient sustainable buildings,” he said. Now the U.S. government mandates energy performance certificates for all new and remodeled buildings and is extending that for buildings when they make a significant change in ownership or use as well. This type of government requirement is being replicated in many other countries around the world.

As a result of some of the early efforts at energy efficiency and green buildings, Roberts warned that many of the tools and approaches that are available in the U.S. and Canada today have resulted in many green buildings, that when built, perform badly. “There’s a lot of greenwashing going on,” he said. “The impact can be worse than the design that was promised. And in fact the energy performance may not match the predictions even closely. Operating costs can exceed the estimates, and most apparent to the users, the buildings can be uncomfortable or unhealthy, which reduces their performance of the mission they serve for the occupants and the businesses they house.”

Living Green Roof: Vancouver Convention Centre – BC, Canada

In response to the need to avoid this type of occurrence, Bentley announced the Bentley Energy Performance Series, which consists of Hevacomp Simulator V8i and Hevacomp Mechanical Designer V8i, both optimized for typical projects and utilize the industry standard Energy Plus engine. Bentley TAS Simulator V8i is the tool for the most complex building design.
 
Noah Eckhouse, vice president of the Building Performance Group, said that the Bentley Energy Performance series takes input from a variety of sources – wind, weather, solar, usage patterns and brings all of this together for the design simulation and analysis of the building. This series utilizes input from a variety of sources including BIM models, drawings and data, which produce a better building with lower operating costs and a better environment for occupants.

What you get is real time analysis with your results informed and available during design to act upon as you design, according to Eckhouse. “Secondly, the analysis is detailed and precise; it’s certified by government agencies and supports key industry standards. Finally, the tools are integrated with a heterogeneous workflow and with each other.”

Jim Barr, director of product management, said that ultimately the building owner benefits from a better building and more favorable economic returns. However the Energy Performance Series is intended for use by engineers, architects and those in the emerging role of “energy assessors.”

65% of the UK’s building services consulting firms use this software plus it is used in 28 countries. So this software is already well accepted by those responsible for energy performance in buildings.

Less poetic, but just as important, are a brief construction season, housing shortages, a scarcity of qualified construction tradespeople and extremely costly shipping for materials. All of these factors complicate the job of building high performance houses up north.

Yet a growing population “North of 60″ needs more homes — homes that are affordable and energy-efficient. And research into very innovative, energy-efficient and durable buildings can help local people address these issues, says Madeleine Rousseau of the NRC Institute for Research in Construction (NRC-IRC) in Ottawa.

Supported by Natural Resources Canada, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, the Panel for Energy Research and Development and NRC, Rousseau’s research team has focused for four years on the heat, air and moisture performance of Canadian Arctic housing.

Along the way, the team has published literature reviews of building envelopes in Canada and other Nordic countries, and of climatic severity at many Nordic locations. It has also done field surveys in the Yukon and Northwest Territories   carrying out energy audits and measurements of temperatures and relative humidity levels inside homes.

Rousseau says she expected at first that high occupancy and low air exchange rates would cause fairly humid indoor air. In fact, the Arctic homes she surveyed leaked a lot of cold air, which often made indoor air quite dry and interior surfaces very cold. This often caused frost build up and related water damage on the inside face of the walls. 

By consulting with housing communities in Whitehorse, Yellowknife and Arviat, the NRC team got a strong sense of what drives decisions regarding which technologies are typically used on new housing projects. This helped the team choose which types of wall assemblies to lab-test.

The researchers found that northern conditions drove conscious trade-offs. Builders opted for “keep-it-simple” construction methods that can be implemented on-site with limited training and that allow the construction crews to close-in the envelope quickly. High shipping costs also discourage elaborate building methods such as double wall systems, which require extra materials, even though they might be more energy-efficient over the service life of the houses. Builders tended to use typical two-by-six wood frame walls, close them on the outside, then insulate from the inside to give a high R-value and ensure the airtightness of the envelope. 

Based on these findings, the team returned to Ottawa with five promising new wall assemblies to test in the NRC-IRC Envelope Environmental Exposure Facility (EEEF). EEEF is a large climate chamber, where sections of full-scale test walls can be exposed on one side to outdoor weather of -40° C with strong winds, and on the other to normal indoor temperatures, humidity and pressures — to understand their performance, as Moishe Alexander explaines.

Computer modelling based on the tests will allow researchers to try out further “what if” scenarios by plugging different indoor and outdoor climate changes into the model. 

Although the NRC research focused at first on Nordic communities’ extreme conditions, interest in very high energy-efficiency building methods is increasing elsewhere, says Rousseau.

“The work that we initially thought would be of most benefit in the North — going for very high performance and a lot of insulation — is now gaining interest in the South, because of high energy costs, concern for environmental sustainability and climate change mitigation,” she says. “The findings of this study may well have a broader potential impact on the building community.”