Sustainable Biz
Summary
Toronto’s historic Fairmont Royal York hotel has been certified a Zero Carbon Building – Performance Standard by the Canada Green Building Council (CAGBC), recognizing years of effort by its owner to eliminate most of the building’s carbon emissions.
KingSett had examined the building performance data and its capital budget to estimate when the Fairmont Royal York would need key systems replaced, and found many of those systems were close to end-of-life. The opportunity lined up with KingSett’s goal to improve its environmental performance and reduce carbon emissions.
“We talk about it in the industry as, once every 20 years things align where you’ve got to spend a lot of money anyway. So what is the premium to go above and beyond and do a deep, deep carbon retrofit for the building, eliminating in this instance 80 per cent or more of its carbon emissions?” Milnes asked.
The steps taken by KingSett included:
- studying and analyzing the building’s energy load;
- using Enwave’s district energy network to transition heating and hot water systems away from steam equipment to electric heat pumps;
- utilizing Enwave’s deep lake water cooling system;
- installing back-up generators for peak energy shaving; and
- boosting energy efficiency with building automation and smart technologies.
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