Tackling Climate Change Building by Building

Together with his friend and business partner, Anthony Aarts, green-tech venture capitalist Tom Rand opened what he says is North America’s greenest hotel, just to prove it could be done.

Now Planet Traveler, a formerly rundown, century-old building at the corner of College Street and Bellevue Avenue in downtown Toronto, is the soapbox from which Tom calls for action on what he says is the most pressing issue of our time: climate change and the creation of more sustainable communities.

He says investments in things like geothermal heating and cooling technology, solar energy and water consumption reduction in buildings can have the greatest impact on climate change challenges.

	Tom Rand

“It’s probably the lowest hanging fruit on the carbon tree, retrofitting buildings, mainly because it doesn’t need policy, it doesn’t need political action; it just needs building owners to take a four or five year view of their capital, rather than a one or two year view,” Tom says.

Because these upgrades represent a return on investment, both socially and financially, “in today’s investment environment that just sounds like good common sense,” he adds.

With his hotel, he’s proven that aiming for a 75 per cent reduction in carbon emissions through building retrofits can be done, and he reiterates that the move has made money.

“If we don’t solve the carbon problem, it doesn’t matter what other problems we solve,” Tom says, in conversation with Axiom News leading up to his upcoming engagement as a plenary speaker at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities Sustainable Communities conference in Ottawa Feb. 8-10.

As a green entrepreneur, clean-tech investor, lead advisor with Toronto's MaRS Discovery District, and author of Kick the Fossil Fuel Habit: 10 Clean Technologies to Save Our World, he’s not afraid to challenge complacency on any subject related to climate change and sustainability.

Current approaches to retrofitting the buildings in our aging cities — which account for 40 per cent of the world’s carbon emissions — don’t go nearly far enough, Tom says.

Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum, for example, which many aspire to in terms of lessening the environmental impact of a building, “is actually an insufficient response to climate change because we know we need to reduce carbon by three quarters.”

Property developers must be a major part of the solution and think bigger than today’s accepted standards.

“That’s where there’s a real economic opportunity and it can be done by building owners at a profit,” Tom says.

Building by building, individual owner by individual owner, some of the biggest challenges facing quest for more sustainable communities can be addressed while growing a clean tech economy.

Visit Tom’s website or Planet Traveler for more information, and if you have questions or comments on this article or a story to share, please contact 800-294-0051, ext. 24, or e-mail kristian(at)axiomnews.ca.