When Andrei Zaretski, BILD’s Manager of Marketing and Media Relations, proposed Rooftop Surfing as the theme of this weekly column, I liked it instantly. Today, I like it even more because today is all about the roof at BILD’s headquarters in Don Mills.
Last fall, working with Pure Energies, BILD installed a solar panel array on our roof to take advantage of the microFIT (feed in tariff) program under the Green Energy Act. In mid-January, we officially connected to the grid, and since then we’ve been creating renewable energy and loving every sunny day that much more.
This morning, Brad Duguid, Ontario’s Energy Minister, will join BILD Chair Paul Golini (Empire Communities), Elizabeth McDonald, President of the Canadian Solar Industries Association, and Pure Energies representatives to officially announce BILD’s initiative before a crowd of industry leaders.
This latest project is a very fitting example of BILD’s leadership in the area of sustainable development and green building. It certainly helps to own your own building and it’s even better when one of your tenants happens to be the EnerQuality Corporation, which runs the Energy Star for New Homes and GreenHouse label programs for Ontario.
The coolest part of all is the HD screen in the lobby of our building that is receiving performance data from our roof so all our members can easily see what is going on just above their heads. That screen has been there for weeks and every time I walk through the lobby, I still sneak a peek at it, especially on the sunny days when the bars on the hourly output graphs are spiking.
Sunny days have taken on a whole new meaning at BILD.
Stephen Dupuis is the President and CEO of the Building Industry & Land Development Association.
