Vancouver-based Nexii makes a low-carbon concrete alternative
Thanks to the climate change crisis, the environment is playing a bigger role in construction than ever before
This article was originally published in our March issue, before the COVID-19 pandemic came to Canada.
When BCBusiness last caught up with venture capitalist Stephen Sidwell, it was the spring of 2014, and Sidwell had just brought in Christine Day as CEO of his new healthy frozen food startup, Luvo.
Less than a year later, following an infusion of cash from institutional investors, Sidwell had exited the business. “I had three companies sell in the same year,” he recalls. “And that set me up for retirement—or so I thought.”
As is often the case, you can’t keep a good entrepreneur retired. Sidwell, now 56, is back at it—this time with Nexii Building Solutions, which aims to take on another very traditional industry, and with a similarly high-minded purpose. “With Luvo, I was on a mission to help improve the health of Canada and the U.S.; with Nexii, I feel like I’m on a mission to try and help the climate,” says Sidwell from his Vancouver office, fresh off a five-week tour of the U.S., meeting with potential customers, developers and investors.
Stephen Sidwell, CEO of Nexii
Nexii’s product is a proprietary granite-like composite, Nexite, which can be used in everything from foundations to roofs. Buildings are huge contributors to climate pollution—and concrete, an immediate competitor to Nexite, emits 900 kilograms of carbon dioxide for every tonne of cement produced. Launched last January, Nexii has already raised $10 million from real estate heavies Beedie, Lotus Capital Corp. and Omicron, and it expects to have a second production plant operational in Squamish by July. (One already exists in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, where Nexite was first developed.)
Green building has been popular in B.C. for eons, but the commercial and office sectors—which Nexii is targeting—have been slow to catch on. With the cost of climate change now unavoidable, business has finally found religion. For James Cheng, sustainable building has been a tenet of faith for more than four decades. Still, the Vancouver-based architect of the Shangri-La, the Fairmont Pacific Rim and the “Amazing Brentwood” (the redeveloped Brentwood Town Centre) argues that true sustainability needs to reach far beyond discussions about a building envelope: “That’s what the government legislates. We feel that that’s not sufficient for true sustainability.”
Cheng takes a three-pronged approach: environmental, social and economic. “If you have a single-use building, like a single-family house or an apartment building, the resident only consumes energy; they don’t generate energy,” he notes. “But in a mixed-use situation, like we did at Brentwood, most commercial components generate a lot of heat because they have to use air conditioners.” Cheng repurposes that energy to heat water going to residents.
Perhaps Cheng’s most ambitious current project is The Stack, a 36-storey tower that will be Vancouver’s tallest office building when completed in early 2022. In addition to being “net zero” (see sidebar), The Stack fully embraces Cheng’s idea of social sustainability, with four stacked and rotated boxes splitting up the tower’s 36 floors, including six outdoor decks and a rooftop patio for office tenants. “It’s been proven now that if people are exposed to sunlight or daylight, they feel happier and generally healthier,” he says. “When we design projects, especially into the future, these are the things we think about.”
While Sidwell and Cheng come at the question of sustainability from different angles, both articulate a similar vision for where things are going. Sidwell says his ultimate goal with Nexii is to become “a global smart living buildings company—using solar for power generation, water conservation and waste treatment systems built into our buildings, smart home technology to manage it all.” Cheng takes the integration idea one step further. “With the advance of technology, and camera monitoring, many cities in Europe and Asia are starting to coordinate the services that people need and take it into a total system. To me, that is the future. When you design cities, it’s no longer just one thing happening; it’s a coordinated everything.
Setting the Standard
Oxford Properties’ The Stack office tower—rising at 1133 Melville Street in downtown Vancouver—is one of 16 projects across Canada chosen to be part of a two-year pilot program for the Canada Green Building Council’s Zero Carbon Building Standard.
There are four key components to the standard:
1. Zero carbon balance
Thanks to clean, renewable energy on- or offsite, building operations yield no net greenhouse gas emissions
2. Efficiency
New projects consider peak energy and maximize energy efficiency, with an emphasis on building envelope and ventilation
3. Renewable energy
Developers incorporate onsite renewable power into new buildings, preparing them for a distributed energy future
4. Low-carbon materials
Carbon footprint of structural and envelope materials factor into design decisions
Source: Canada Green Building Council, Zero Carbon Building Standard
TORONTO – One expert predicts Ottawa‘s changes to mortgage rules will help spur demand among potential homebuyers but says policies aimed at driving new supply are needed to address the “core issues” facing the market.
The federal government’s changes, set to come into force mid-December, include a higher price cap for insured mortgages to allow more people to qualify for a mortgage with less than a 20 per cent down payment.
The government will also expand its 30-year mortgage amortization to include first-time homebuyers buying any type of home, as well as anybody buying a newly built home.
CIBC Capital Markets deputy chief economist Benjamin Tal calls it a “significant” move likely to accelerate the recovery of the housing market, a process already underway as interest rates have begun to fall.
However, he says in a note that policymakers should aim to “prevent that from becoming too much of a good thing” through policies geared toward the supply side.
Tal says the main issue is the lack of supply available to respond to Canada’s rapidly increasing population, particularly in major cities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17,2024.
OTTAWA – The Canadian Real Estate Association says the number of homes sold in August fell compared with a year ago as the market remained largely stuck in a holding pattern despite borrowing costs beginning to come down.
The association says the number of homes sold in August fell 2.1 per cent compared with the same month last year.
On a seasonally adjusted month-over-month basis, national home sales edged up 1.3 per cent from July.
CREA senior economist Shaun Cathcart says that with forecasts of lower interest rates throughout the rest of this year and into 2025, “it makes sense that prospective buyers might continue to hold off for improved affordability, especially since prices are still well behaved in most of the country.”
The national average sale price for August amounted to $649,100, a 0.1 per cent increase compared with a year earlier.
The number of newly listed properties was up 1.1 per cent month-over-month.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
MONTREAL – Two Quebec real estate brokers are facing fines and years-long suspensions for submitting bogus offers on homes to drive up prices during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Christine Girouard has been suspended for 14 years and her business partner, Jonathan Dauphinais-Fortin, has been suspended for nine years after Quebec’s authority of real estate brokerage found they used fake bids to get buyers to raise their offers.
Girouard is a well-known broker who previously starred on a Quebec reality show that follows top real estate agents in the province.
She is facing a fine of $50,000, while Dauphinais-Fortin has been fined $10,000.
The two brokers were suspended in May 2023 after La Presse published an article about their practices.
One buyer ended up paying $40,000 more than his initial offer in 2022 after Girouard and Dauphinais-Fortin concocted a second bid on the house he wanted to buy.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
