Friday Video - Vancouver’s Stunning Six Acre Living Roof

Vancouver’s 6 Acre Living Roof from Dave Budge on Vimeo.

Most of the time we focus on the “design of sustainable finance” over here.  This time, we are taking a moment to also look at building design and a particularly innovative application — to inspire us about the potential lying in every sustainable project and financial transaction.

Please enjoy this short video of Vancouver’s Living Roof, courtesy of Fast Company (courtesy of Treehugger).

The Vancouver Convention Center will be broadcasting the 2010 Olympics live, so city officials wanted the project to make a statement reflecting their sustainability values to the world. I hope that you’ll agree that what the design and construction team accomplished is stunning.

While life cycle costs are not discussed in the video, they do highlight the following innovative features:

“…the building also has black water treatment systems and desalination machinery to water the plants, a heat pump that uses seawater, and cooling via radiant floor. The bottom line is a water-use reduction of 60% to 70% over similarly sized convention centers.”

Green Roof Incentive in New York

Photocredit: dreamymo
Folks love the green incentives that have immediate, easily calculated cash value.

Environmental Leader (a green newsletter we dig) has put out the word on New York’s new green roof tax credit of $4.50/sf, up to $100,000 for installing a green roof. It’s structured as a one year credit off property taxes.

It comes out to an approximate 25% reduction off the cost of the roof — a significant value. I checked around with a couple of sources who said that this is a “decent estimate” of the savings. Which we took to mean that you need to factor in variability in the roof pricing — and hence, the credit’s actual value.

Not bad — a green roof in New York for 75% of the price. And that’s not including the heating and cooling benefits the roof brings to the building as well as the reduction of the heat island effect in the city.

Go Big Apple!