City celebrates LEED Certification for four projects

With a goal of reaching net zero Greenhouse Gas emissions (GHG) by 2040, the City is working aggressively to increase energy efficiency and reduce energy consumption and emissions wherever it can. These efforts have led to four recent building projects achieving LEED Certification, including:

• Stanley A Milner Library
• Edmonton Police Service Northwest Campus
• Fort Edmonton Park Indigenous People’s Experience Cultural Centre
• Kathleen Andrews Northeast Transit Garage

LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environment Design. It is the most widely-used green building rating system in the world, available for virtually all building, community, and home-projects.

Buildings are responsible for a significant amount of global energy use, resource consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Green buildings offer us a better quality of life (delivering buildings that offer occupants the optimal conditions for health, comfort and productivity), while also lowering global carbon emissions, reducing electricity and water bills, and creating new green jobs.

The LEED rating program is a four-tiered credit-based system that awards points based on compliance with different aspects of sustainability. A basic LEED certification is awarded if a building amasses between 40 and 49. LEED Silver and Gold certifications are 50-59 and 60-79 points respectively. The highest LEED certification is LEED Platinum, awarded to buildings that attain 80 or more points.The City of Edmonton is excited to lead the way when it comes to building and all City-owned new construction projects must meet LEED Silver rating at minimum.

Fast Facts: Stanley A Milner Library

227,000 square feet

Since the majority of a building’s embodied carbon is accounted for by the foundation and structure, the City opted to reuse the existing floors, columns and roof structure. The stripping down to floors, and walls, as well as reconfiguring interior spaces, took significant effort and made a great impact to lowering carbon emissions.

• 93% of waste was landfill diverted
• The building was reroofed using High Albedo materials (materials that can reduce air conditioning load requirements and urban heat island effect)
• The project demonstrates 27% energy cost savings
• The project has updated connections to alternative transportation

Photo Credit: Leroy Schulz

Fast Facts: Edmonton Police Service Northwest Campus

• Awarded 51 LEED points
• Water-efficient landscaping is achieved with drought-tolerant and native plantings
• Modelled energy cost savings will be 45.61%
• The total predicted energy consumption is 9,934,882 MJ/year for electricity and 12,289,820 MJ/year of natural gas
• 96.50% of waste was diverted from the landfill achieving an exemplary performance credit
• 21.93% of material used on the project was derived from recycled content
• The facility achieved 21.20% water-use reduction
• Low-emitting paint, floor systems and composite wood are installed throughout to achieve Indoor Environmental quality credits.
• Over 75% of all furniture and seating used low emitting materials, aiding in indoor environmental quality for the facility.

Fast Facts: Fort Edmonton Park Indigenous People’s Experience Cultural Centre

• This project achieves 50% more energy efficiency than the National Energy Code of Canada for Buildings (NECB) 2011
• This project achieves 41% (or greater) greenhouse gas reduction than the NECB 2011 reference building
• This project has a predicted annual heating demand of 75.6KWh/m2 which is less than 80KWh/m2 as required by City policy.

Fast Facts: Kathleen Andrews Transit Garage

• Kathleen Andrews Transit Garage will be the first garage in Edmonton to accommodate 30 of the City’s 40 new electric buses. Modifications were made to accommodate the needs of electric buses, which included reinforced concrete floors to bear the weight of the buses, an additional emergency generator and charging stations.
• The roof is reinforced to support future installation of solar panels. Supplemental power from the solar photovoltaic panel installation will be used to power the charging stations for the electric buses.
• The entire building was designed to be LEED Silver certified and relies solely on LED lighting, which means it’s much more energy efficient, saves money and lowers emissions.
• The roof was designed to collect rainwater, which is held in a 1.5 million litre cistern, for a bus wash system. That’s the equivalent to 7,500 household rain barrels of rainwater.
• The project was awarded the Canadian Urban Transit Association’s 2020 Corporate Leadership Award for Environmental Sustainability.