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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 project underway is The Stack, a 36-storey tower that will be Vancouver's tallest office building when complet- ed in early 2022. In addition to being "net zero" (see below), The Stack fully embraces Cheng's idea of social sustain- ability, with four stacked and rotated boxes splitting up the tower's 36 floors, including six outdoor decks and a roof- top 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 ques- tion of sustain- ability 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." (In January, he hired former Vancouver mayor Gregor Rob- ertson to help in that effort.) 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." ■ 78 BCBUSINESS MARCH 2020 W hen 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, follow- ing 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 Build- ing Solutions, which aims to take on another very tradition- al 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 to help the climate," he says from his Vancouver office, fresh off a five-week tour of the U.S., meeting with potential custom- ers, developers and investors. Nexii's product is a propri- etary granite-like composite, Nexiite, for use in everything from foundations to roofs. Buildings are huge contribu- tors to climate pollution—and concrete, an immediate competitor to Nexiite, 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 Nexi- ite 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, sus- tainable 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 "Amaz- ing Brentwood" (the rede- veloped 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: environ- mental, social and economic. "If you have a single-use build- ing, 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 A New Construct Sustainability used to be a niche concern in real estate. But thanks to the climate change crisis, that's no longer the case by Matt O'Grady I T ' S A G O OD T H I NG ( quality time ) SOURCE: CANADA GREEN BUILDING COUNCIL, ZERO CARBON BUILDING STANDARD 1 . Z E R O C A R B ON B A L A NC E Thanks to clean, renewable energy on- and offsite, building operations yield no net greenhouse gas emissions 2 . E F F IC I E NC Y New projects consider peak energy and maximize energy ef- ficiency, with an emphasis on building envelope and ventilation 3 . R E N E WA B L E E N E R G Y Developers incorporate onsite renewable power into new buildings, preparing them for a distributed energy future 4 . L OW- C A R B ON M AT E R I A L S Carbon footprint of structural and envelope materials factor into design decisions SET TING THE STA NDA RD 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 Coun- cil's Zero Carbon Building Standard. The standard has four components: Stephen Sidwell heads Nexii, which makes a low-carbon con- crete alternative

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