LEEDS Certification 

Leeds Certification 

• The goal of the project designers was to qualify for LEED Platinum certification. 
• LEED stands for Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design --  a complete framework for assessing building performance and meeting sustainability goals.
• First principal of LEED design is to reduce your demand – for materials, energy and other resources
• Its scoring system includes a set of required prerequisites and a system of credits that can be earned in 6 major categories: 
• Sustainable site development
• Water efficiency
• Energy & Atmosphere
• Materials selection & sourcing
• Indoor environmental quality
• Innovation & Design Process
• Need to go through a full cycle of cooling and heating seasons, so the energy use etc can be assessed, before certification occurs.
• Platinum is the highest level LEED certification and this project was designed with some buffer in case some things didn’t work out as planned.
• To Michael Leckman’s knowledge this is the only adaptation of industrial buildings in North America, designed to LEED Platinum standards..

Some of the Green Design Features of the Centre for Green Cities are:

A centralized building automation system (BAS)

• responsible for tracking energy consumption based on the comprehensive measurements and verification plan that has been developed for the entire site – including the Centre for Green Cities.

Lighting Controls

• consisting of energy management and a fluorescent dimming system that control interior and exterior lighting throughout the complex
• This system provides daylight harvesting with daylight sensors and occupancy dictated lighting controls through occupancy sensors to reduce the amount of energy used on unnecessary lighting.
• Additionally, time scheduling is used to reduce the amount of lighting during unoccupied hours

CO2 sensors

• enables the building to regulate and adjust the volume of fresh air supplied to the space based on actually indoor CO2 levels.
• These sensors provide demand control ventilation scheme that save energy during periods of low occupancy, while at the same time ensuring an optimal indoor environment is maintained from an air quality perspective.

Radiant Heating

• installed on floors 2-5 are highly efficient thanks to their low water content and high coefficient of heat conduction requiring only low flow temperatures- meaning that more heat is generated by less and cooler water, an ideal counterpart to the high efficiency boilers installed in the building.

Ground floor

• spaces are provided with radiant heating coils within the concrete slab, again delivering heat from a position where its benefits will be felt the most.

Heat Recovery

• from the kitchen exhaust is connected to a run-around closed hydronic loop to recover the heat generated in the kitchen.
• Warm air from the exhaust passes over the recovery coil located in the kitchen exhaust.
• The warm air heats a glycol solution in the coil.
• The solution pumped to a preheat coil in the outside air stream, where the heat from the glycol solution is transferred to the incoming air.
• The cooled glycol solution is pumped back to the exhaust side to repeat the cycle.
• This system is used in the fall and winter months to enhance energy recovery within the building, which reduces the amount of energy needed to heat the building.

The Building Envelope

• designed and constructed using a quality assurance plan.
• The design was reviewed numerous times by third-party durability consultant, and ongoing testing of building components occurred during construction to reduce the risk of premature envelope failure and the environmental and economic costs associated with it.
• This is one of the most effective ways to increase the efficiency of a building- through a high quality building envelope.
• The insulation within the building envelope is composted of sprayfoam derived from soya beans and locally manufactured mineral wool batt insulation.

Certification Process 

The LEED certification process relates both to Construction Process & Ongoing site Operations.

Examples during our Construction Process

• 95% of debris from construction, demolition & land-clearing
• was diverted from landfill for recycling or reuse
• 100% diversion of recyclable materials (paper, plastic, glass, metal & others)
• New roofs -- highly reflective(buildings 12, 14, 16)

Examples for Operations

• closed-loop supply chains in which suppliers take back waste from the use of their products
• new, improved on-site composting is in the process of being put together
• only compostable & reusable food service items will be used here

Center for Green Cities