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The following is written by freelance journalist Chris Benjamin and submitted to The Laker News by Quest as part of the Powered By Communities communication campaign.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n BERWICK:<\/strong> To meet Nova Scotia\u2019s carbon-reduction targets, old buildings must become more efficient. For property owners, retrofitting an older building can seem prohibitively expensive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Designer Lorrie Rand, builder Nick Rudnicki, and facilitator Emma Norton have a solution from the Dutch. It\u2019s called Energiesprong, meaning Energy Leap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They\u2019re calling the Nova Scotia version ReCover. It involves prefabricating a new, efficient building cover, adding improved insulation, updated ventilation, cooling and heating, and solar panels, bringing the building to net zero\u2014it produces as much energy as it uses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [adrotate group=”6″]<\/p>\n\n\n\n [adrotate banner=”34″]<\/p>\n\n\n\n [adrotate banner=”31″]<\/p>\n\n\n\n The process is complete in days and costs a few hundred thousand dollars. The owner saves $1.5 million in energy costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cInitially we\u2019re focusing on low-rise buildings,\u201d Rand says. They offer a convenient shape. A fussier shape, say an old Victorian house, would be a difficult starting point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The low rise is also ubiquitous. \u201cOver 40,000 households that pre-date 1996.\u201d Buildings built before 1996 use twice the energy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rudnicki and Rand had done previous work for the landlord of a low-rise apartment building on Lawrence Street in Halifax. The predictability of the low-rise shape will be important as the ReCover team tries to scale up the project. They are sharing research and lessons as the project progresses, in the hopes that Nova Scotia can scale up quickly enough to address climate change before it\u2019s too late. The cost per building should decrease by half as the process becomes more commonplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [adrotate banner=”92″]<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rand and Rudnicki plan to complete the Lawrence Street building by the year end. If 40,000 such buildings are ReCovered, it will reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Nova Scotia by 210,000 tonnes annually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rudnicki expects their process to create more than 5,000 full-time equivalent jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ReCover, Rand hopes, is the beginning of a movement to make inefficient buildings a relic of the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [adrotate group=”8″]<\/p>\n\n\n\n [adrotate banner=”96″]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [adrotate banner=”95″] [adrotate banner=”93″] The following is written by freelance journalist Chris Benjamin and submitted to The Laker News by Quest as part of the Powered By Communities communication campaign. BERWICK: To meet Nova Scotia\u2019s carbon-reduction targets, old buildings must become more efficient. For property owners, retrofitting an older building can seem prohibitively expensive. Designer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13734,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[167,957],"tags":[1619,1621,121],"class_list":["post-18134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-news","tag-berwick","tag-energy","tag-hrm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18134\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}