Project Showcase

Springbrook Community Association is developing a Net Zero Community Hall, a first-of-its-kind project in Alberta, to provide a modern, accessible, and energy-efficient space. Using innovative straw-blown prefabricated walls and renewable energy, the hall will cut operating costs, ensure long-term sustainability, and set a new standard for future community infrastructure.

Deployment of low cost internet of things (IoT) sensors to measure air quality and occupancy inside Red Deer Polytechnic’s Alternative Energy Lab (AEL) building for optimizing HVAC use. The technology is vendor agnostic and use advanced data analytics model (including AI) to efficiently control (real-time) HVAC unit based on zonal air quality and occupancy. Minimal intervention and HVAC retrofitting is required which makes this approach economically feasible.

Project objectives include:

1. Increase energy efficiency of Alternate Energy Lab building at Red Deer Polytechnic by moving to demand based control with a novel approach.
2. Demonstrate a practical approach in reducing 40% energy usage and 25% reduction in natural gas totaling 10.5 metric tons of CO2 equivalent
3. Scale this approach to other building across Red Deer Polytechnic as a part of “living lab” and in Central Alberta (hospitals, library , gyms, etc.).
4. Educate building operators, researchers and industries to adopt this approach using our Data Sharing Alliance cloud platform.

The project incorporates patented ZERO-MIXING technology into its HVAC system retrofit, a departure from conventional systems that often struggle with inefficiencies associated with traditional water-mixing configurations. This innovative approach enhances operational efficiency, leading to substantial reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, aligning with SSRIA environmentally sustainable goals. Furthermore, the project prioritizes minimizing embodied carbon by strategically optimizing system design, minimizing material usage, and selecting low-carbon building materials whenever feasible. This holistic approach addresses both operational and embodied carbon emissions, contributing to a more sustainable and environmentally responsible building.

Project objectives include:

• Test ZM technology in a live building environment.
• Collect data on energy consumption, OPEX, and environmental impact before and after retrofit to demonstrate effectiveness and commercial value.
• Reduce OPEX driven by inefficient system designs.
• Demonstrate cost-effectiveness and scalability by validating reduced CAPEX installation, showcasing how ZM prevents design oversizing.
• Promote sustainability and environmental leadership by demonstrating GHG reduction through minimizing energy consumption and optimizing system operation.

Ecopilot software is an add-on to an existing Building Automation System (BAS) that uses real-time data, indoor wireless temperature sensors, 5-day weather forecasts to exploit the building thermal mass to provide heating and maintain cooling within higher mass concrete building structures. The technology consists of hardware and software containing real time AI (artificial intelligence) algorithm that sends temperature setpoint offsets to central HVAC systems and creates dynamic scheduling of start and stop times of central HVAC equipment, such as boilers, chillers or AHU’s (air handling units).

This project will install six advanced micro-wind turbines on a small commercial building to evaluate the feasibility of building-integrated wind energy in Alberta. By analyzing real-world performance data, the study will provide critical insights into efficiency, reliability, and economic viability. The collected data will be used to develop an economic model and a system sizing tool, supporting future adoption and optimization of micro wind power solutions.

Design and construction of a very low embodied carbon, all electric, high performance (Passive House Principles), net zero on site energy, affordable, missing middle, garage and workshop with legal backyard secondary suite above. Built on an existing single family urban lot in Calgary, using prefabricated building envelope products.

Project objectives include:

• Provide an example of a repeatable combination of existing products that can be used to create affordable, low embodied carbon, all electric, high performance, net zero on site energy buildings that fit into the “missing middle” housing scale. Specifically the backyard suite, lower end of the missing middle housing scale.
• Show that high performance and low carbon can be achieved at an affordable price.
• Show that a business case can be made for high performance low carbon backyard suites.
• Use Prefabricated building envelope products to reduce disturbance to neighbours and on site construction time frame.
• Work with the City of Calgary to demystify and simplify the Development and Building Permit application process

Implement an integrated suite of key innovations in multifamily construction that help overcome regulatory & industry hurdles to make significant reductions in embodied carbon, and reach the goal of Net Zero operation.

Demonstrate and present a Net Zero building specification for the missing middle stock building programs currently being developed in association with the City of Calgary, MDDL, Alberta Ecotrust, Passive House Alberta, and NRCAN/LEEP.

Project objectives include:

(1) Overcome building regulation barriers to install polycore foundation and floor slab assembly products

(2) Construct a double wall & attic/ceiling, interior smart air/vapor barrier, and interior mechanical/electrical chase – insulated only with cellulose

(3) Overcome fire & energy code conflict by providing a non-combustible insulation & strapping thermal break detail for firewalls

(4) Eliminate gas service & provide 100% electrification with operational training to property management and tenants

(5) Install & monitor all electrical loads and solar PV systems sized and monitored separately for each unit, including EV charging/monitoring

Kanas Shelter Corp. has acquired an office tower in downtown Calgary for the purposes of converting to residential units and seeks to implement next generation energy technologies with the same goals of reducing energy costs, providing energy security and emissions reduction.

This project seeks to implement a micro-grid including the following systems

• Fuel cell for heat and power (first-of-kind in this market)
• Electricity storage
• Variable Refrigerant Flow for heating and cooling

This combination of leading-edge technologies represents an innovative solution to drive down energy costs while also significantly reducing carbon emissions.  Calgary has approved the conversion of many office towers to residential. This solution will help to demonstrate that the legacy technologies, while well understood, are now not the best solutions in our journey to reduce emissions.

The Eco Positive Home project demonstrates energy system solution with onsite generation combined with seasonal and daily thermal storage that overcomes issues with heat pump operation in cold temperatures while maintaining a small but high utilization connection to the grid. The water conservation elements will reduce water consumption by 50%.

The primary objective is to develop, validate, prove, and then deploy the energy and water solutions across a range of scales. This will include the development of packaged systems and solutions which may then be deployed by mechanical and plumbing contractors across Canada and abroad.

The energy systems solution is intended to generate a negative utility and effectively negative carbon due to the displaced carbon from the home and the two EVs it powers. Further benefits include grid stabilization and addressing peak demand issues at the distribution level of the grid through thermal storage and load shifting.

A lower life cycle cost system with multiple redundant low carbon energy sources will provide climate resiliency and community resiliency due to grid impacts and larger scale deployments that will be unlocked by this proof of concept.

The project innovation is more evolutionary than revolutionary. Site built retrofits are relatively straightforward. You build to what’s there and solve the problems you encounter as you go.

Panelized solutions take a lot of expensive upfront work. This project is innovative in that it builds on the project team’s experience to take advantage of the benefits of both.

The project reduces greenhouse gas emissions by making the wall upgrade portion of the deep energy retrofits more affordable and more likely to happen. It does this be reducing costs below what is currently done.

A range of techniques for upgrading exterior wall insulation have been and are being tried: site installed rigid insulation, both mineral fiber and foam sheets with furring of some kind to attached siding, stick built 2×4 walls supported at grade on treated boxes, site made Larson trusses, I joists, and a couple of panelized solutions. All of these options are expensive and require substantial on site labour.

For the site built techniques, the existing cladding usually needs to be removed and disposed of and there is considerable skilled labour required to cut, fit and install the materials. Panelization requires exacting measurement of the existing building (usually digital) and careful translation of those measurements to panel drawings in order to ensure a good fit. There is also the need for the precise installation of some kind of support bracket, a facility big enough to fabricate the wall panels, trucking to transport them and a crane to install them.

The hybrid component based approach addresses some of these obstacles to reduce cost and complexity as follows:

• Much reduced demolition labour and disposal volume.
• Simple prefabricated components that can be made almost anywhere and that can be transported and installed with minimal equipment. -Components that will reduce installation time over all, especially finicky work from scaffolding.
• Components that can be installed quickly by entry level and lower skilled workers.
• Standardize the treatments for as many of the junctions, utility and service penetrations and building conditions as we can to reduce the labour and thinking required to maintain insulation continuity, improve water resistance and increased air tightness.
• Formalize installation and completion procedures that improve efficiency.
• Uses material efficiently.

In the final phase, the project team tests the idea of simple panel like modules. The expansion potential is enormous but will depend on the size of the market for deep retrofits in Canada and the northern US. That market is dependent mostly on cost and affordability. The project team is confident they can reduce the cost of the wall component of deep retrofits but they won’t know by how much until we test and refine it.

This project adapts the Energiesprong panelized retrofit technique brought to Canada by Peter Amerongen (ReNu Engineering and Retrofit Canada). The prefabricated panelized retrofits use natural, low embodied carbon wood fiber insulation in order to increase efficiency of production. Demonstrating these innovative panels on different types of buildings (1 fourplex and 1 single family dwelling) will not only impact these buildings but also contribute to the larger aggregation of panelized retrofit projects, further de-risking and facilitating its uptake.

Wood fiber, a high performing insulator and carbon sequestering material, is often deemed too costly for residential retrofits, as is exterior insulation more broadly. The project targets barriers such as high costs, low awareness of bio-based materials, and limited industry training, which hinder the adoption of exterior insulation/retrofits and deter building owners. The project will employ prefabrication to enhance the use of wood fiber insulation, promoting a shift away from synthetic materials. Prefabrication reduces waste and site variables, maximizing efficiency and reducing costs.

By integrating innovative prefabrication methods with wood fiber insulation for panelized retrofits, the project aims to lower embodied and operational GHG emissions beyond what is achievable with current practices. By retrofitting existing structures with exterior insulation, energy consumption for heating and cooling decrease and operational emissions decrease significantly. The use of wood-fiber insulation minimizes the embodied carbon associated with insulation, especially compared to typical exterior insulation materials like EPS.

These two demonstration projects (1 fourplex and 1 single family dwelling) will be monitored and their performance catalogued along with the production and installation process in a case study, leveraging the expertise and networks of our project team to ensure objectives are met and resulting knowledge is shared widely.

This project demonstrates an all-electric combined HVAC and domestic hot water system using a single heat pump for both new and existing multi-unit residential buildings, which provides low operational and embodied carbon at a lower cost than competing all-electric solutions.

The project comprises two innovative elements:

1. A single heat pump integrated with a ventilation system to provide the entire building’s heating, cooling, DHW, and ventilation needs.
2. Cold air distribution (CAD), which uses very low temperatures to increase the cooling capacity of the air delivered to indoor spaces, reducing duct size and fan and pump energy.

Project objectives include:

1. Confirm the cost savings compared to the typical alternative all-electric solution.
2. Confirm predicted energy and carbon performance is achieved.
3. Gather, analyze, and report on monitoring data to ensure occupant acceptance; optimize operation of pilot system; and inform optimized design and operation of future installations.
4. Develop and disseminate exportable knowledge and products to support solution scale-up.