Oxford Properties Group Claims Zero Carbon Standard High-Rise

Real estate developer, investor, and manager Oxford Properties Group announced that its Vancouver new high-rise office building The Stack, co-owned with CPP investments, is officially open. The company claims that it is the first high-rise commercial tower in North America built to zero carbon standards.

Designed by Vancouver-based architect James K.M. Cheng, the 37-story, 550,000 sq ft office tower is in downtown Vancouver and features a twisting, stacked box design.

“The opening represents a landmark in the commercial real estate industry’s journey to decarbonization by being the first office tower to attain the Canada Green Building Council’s Zero Carbon Building – Design standard certification and the first high-rise commercial tower in North America built to zero carbon standards,” the company said.

Oxford said that the design and construction achieved zero-carbon status through several technologies and techniques, including low-carbon building systems and a high-performance triple-pane glazing system. The building uses smart building technology to provide insights on energy management, optimize building performance and enable preventative maintenance. A rooftop solar array is supposed to annually deliver 26,000 kilowatt-hours of energy.

High-rise buildings present a difficult problem for urban architecture. They are a significant source of lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions, according to a 2021 study in Urban Sustainability. The researchers concluded that “taller urban environments significantly increase life cycle GHG emissions (+154%) and low-density urban environments significantly increase land use (+142%). However, increasing urban density without increasing urban height reduces life cycle GHG emissions while maximising the population capacity.”

And the issues aren’t a simple assembly of technical problems that have straightforward solutions. A 2021 paper, Drivers, barriers and strategies for zero carbon buildings in high-rise high-density cities, in Energy and Buildings, looked at buildings in Hong Kong. The researchers found “economic, legislative, cultural, and supply chain drivers for ZCBs [zero-carbon buildings], but economic, legislative, cultural, geographical and skill and knowledge barriers were also identified.”

It’s not that reaching zero carbon in high rises is impossible. But it is more complex than it might seem, and it is something developers must face, given growing climate issues and the likelihood that increasingly governments will begin regulating.