Back in early 2022, Exhibition Place, Canada's largest entertainment and business events venue, officially signed the Net Zero Carbon Events Pledge, a global initiative to address climate change across the events and meetings industry, per targets laid out in the Paris Climate Accord. From LEED-certified buildings to energy self-sufficiency, here are four green initiatives they’re prioritizing to get to net zero.
1. Making environmental sustainability part of the company’s DNA through the GREENSmart program
Sustainability has been a part of Exhibition Place’s DNA for over 20 years. Since 2004, Exhibition Place has had the GREENSmart program, a.k.a. an environmental plan across its facilities: Enercare Centre, Beanfield Centre, Better Living Centre, Queen Elizabeth Hall, etc. This includes rainwater harvesting, waste management, living architecture and more.
A key initiative in helping reduce carbon emissions is the district energy system, which is a thermal energy distribution system for multiple buildings and consists of a heating and cooling central plant within Enercare Centre. This helps to significantly reduce the amount of energy required to keep buildings at a comfortable temperature. In addition to this, lighting is one of the largest sources of energy consumption. From energy-efficient fixtures to a motion-controlled system that powers areas only when necessary, energy conservation across the grounds is prioritized without impacting the guest experience.
Enercare Centre is the province’s first conference centre to achieve LEED Platinum certification
2. Obtaining certification through Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)
In addition to its GREENSmart initiatives, Exhibition Place has achieved recognition through LEED, the most widely used green building rating system, which evaluates features like water efficiency, energy performance, material sourcing, eco-friendly landscaping and more. Beanfield Centre is one of Canada’s first LEED Silver conference centres and Enercare Centre is the province’s first conference centre to achieve LEED Platinum certification. Enercare’s initial certification goal was to achieve 50 points, however, through the enthusiastic efforts of the team, this goal was exceeded with a total of 80 points
3. Focusing on green energy sources like wind, solar and geothermal
To further reduce its carbon footprint, Exhibition Place is targeting energy self-sufficiency through several renewable energy production projects. The wind turbine at Exhibition Place is the first in the city of Toronto and is capable of generating one million kilowatt hours of electricity per year. The turbine also helps to displace some of the harmful chemicals that are responsible for smog and acid rain—moving up to 1,800 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually.
Solar panels at Exhibition Place
The Horse Palace, located on the north end of Exhibition Place, uses its 130,000-square-foot flat roof to collect solar energy through a photovoltaic (PV) plant. When first installed, this 100-kilowatt plant was the largest urban PV array in Canada. Following this, Horse Palace West Side, East Annex and Better Living Centre installed solar panels. Together, these PV plants reduce CO2 emissions annually by 200 tonnes.
The Press Building is powered using a geothermal plant and is expected to save 110,000 kilowatts hours per year of electricity and over 15,000 cubic meters of natural gas. The geothermal plant reduces the annual carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions of the Press Building by approximately 125 tonnes per year.
4. Creating ample green space
Urban forests play an important role in sustainability since they reduce pollution, provide shade for visitors and promote biodiversity. Within its 152-acre site, Exhibition Place created an urban forestry program and has over 3,000 trees across the grounds including many cherry blossom trees. Both the sakuras and the naturalized garden on-site are watered using lake-water irrigation piped from nearby Lake Ontario.
