CBC Toronto
Update Jan. 28th, 2010

Toronto and its Towers

Mary Wiens asks Julia Deans, CEO of the Toronto City Summit Alliance and Ron Dembo, founder of Zerofootprint, to review the progress of commercial, industrial and institutional Toronto.

Listen to audio (8:00) 

The GTA has one of the biggest concentrations of high-rise towers in North America. Built during the construction hey-day of the 50s, 60s and 70s, at a time when energy costs were negligible, they are also energy hogs.

Turns out, those same towers can be turned into the most energy-efficient buildings in the world. New retrofitting technology, including something called “re-skinning” - creating a new thermal barrier by re-cladding aging high-rises with new materials, from solar panels to “media” walls - could transform Toronto’s high-rise building stock.

In the middle of a very deep recession, Toronto and the GTA are being positioned to become the retrofit capital of North America.

To Ron Dembo, founder of Zerofootprint, a nonprofit that works with businesses to reduce their carbon footprint, the timing couldn’t be better, given that so many of Ontario’s old industries are struggling.

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