At a recent ceremony, Manitoba Hydro’s head office at 360 Portage Avenue in downtown Winnipeg was awarded a Platinum certification for its adherence to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED®) standards by the Green Building Council of Canada. Platinum is the highest certification available under the LEED program, making Manitoba Hydro Place the most energy efficient office tower in North America and the only office tower in Canada to receive this prestigious rating.
“The provincial government is very pleased to see Manitoba Hydro recognized for its efforts to promote energy efficiency and sustainable design and building practices through Manitoba Hydro Place,” said the Hon Greg Selinger, Premier of Manitoba and guest speaker at today’s event. “These are values embraced by our government, and to see how a large building such as this can be so efficient while still being an iconic piece of architecture and promoting the vibrancy of downtown Winnipeg is really amazing. It confirms we are on the right path by promoting this sort of development in Manitoba.”
Scott Thomson, President and CEO of Manitoba Hydro, explained that receiving a Platinum LEED rating marked the completion of a process that started many years ago, when the corporation first committed to move its headquarters into downtown Winnipeg.
“This building truly embodies Manitoba Hydro as a utility and as a corporate citizen – a leader in energy efficiency and sustainability,” said Thomson. “By every measure, Manitoba Hydro Place has met or exceeded our goals. Today, our 1,800 head office employees have a comfortable, healthy and productive workplace that also encourages use of public transit and active transportation. The building’s flexible, modern design meets the needs of our company today, while retaining the flexibility to adapt to new work environments in the future, making it a great investment for Manitoba Hydro. And it does all this while achieving unprecedented reductions in energy use when compared to traditionally-designed buildings of this size.”
The Platinum certification was presented to Manitoba Hydro by Thomas Mueller of the Canada Green Building Council, administrator of LEED standards in Canada. A plaque commemorating the certification was unveiled by Premier Selinger, Thomson, Mueller, lead design architect Bruce Kuwabara, and advocate architect Dudley Thompson. The plaque will be permanently mounted in the main gallery of Manitoba Hydro Place.
Compared to conventional office towers, Manitoba Hydro Place achieves reductions in energy use of over 70 per cent – from over 300 kW.h per square metre to under 85 kW.h per square metre – resulting in estimated energy savings of over $500,000 annually. These savings were achieved thanks to a unique integrated design process that utilized leading-edge Power Smart* technologies and energy efficient passive and active systems. These include south-facing winter gardens to capture the maximum amount of solar energy during the winter months, a solar chimney to provide ventilation for the entire structure with minimum energy usage, recovery of waste heat, narrow floor plates with high ceilings and extensive use of glass to allow for natural lighting, and a geothermal system consisting of 280 wells, each 122 meters deep, for heating and cooling.
An advanced computerized building management system ensures that the building’s passive and active systems work together for maximum efficiency, resulting in a climatically-adaptive building that responds to – and takes advantage of – the surrounding environment and natural processes. Although originally designed with the goal of attaining a LEED Gold certification, in operation the building has proven to be even more efficient that its designers had anticipated, resulting in the Platinum certification.
More about Manitoba Hydro Place Head Office: www.hydro.mb.ca/mhplace.
