Welcome to our weekly newsletter where we highlight environmental trends and solutions that are moving us to a more sustainable world.
Hi, it's Emily. Ever think about the fact that ancient civilizations desiring comforts such as heating, plumbing and ventilation couldn't burn fossil fuels? Instead, they relied heavily on physics and engineering. Now, climate concerns may bring back those ancient strategies.
This week:
Building ventilation invented by ancient Persians and Romans is making a modern comeback The Big Picture: Where are the monarch butterflies now? Canadian electric locomotive built to work in –40 C winters Building ventilation invented by ancient Persians and Romans is making a modern comeback
A solar chimney runs almost from the bottom to the top of the east face of Limberlost Place, George Brown College's new mass timber net-zero building in Toronto. (Emily Chung/CBC)A 10-storey wood building is a striking sight. But beyond the mass timber construction and rooftop solar panels, the biggest sustainability features of Limberlost Place, the new net-zero building at Toronto's George Brown College, are ones you may not have heard of — solar chimneys.
They're a modern version of a technology used by the Romans and Persians thousands of years ago to ventilate and cool their buildings. And they've been previously used in a handful of modern buildings in Canada, including Manitoba Hydro Place in Winnipeg, Van Dusen Botanical Garden visitor centre in Vancouver and Evergreen Brick Works in Toronto.
To bring in fresh air, most buildings today rely on mechanical ventilation systems with big fans that can guzzle a tenth of a building's electricity — rivalling lighting and computers, says Liam O'Brien, a professor who teaches building engineering at Carleton University in Ottawa.
A solar chimney uses natural forces to move fresh air into and through a building — a strategy called passive ventilation — thereby saving energy.
A bonus? It keeps working even when the power is out.
Solar chimneys rely on the sun to work, says Phil Silverstein, an architect who gave me a tour of how it all works at Limberlost Place. Silverstein is a partner at Moriyama Teshima, one of two architecture firms that collaborated to win the design competition for the building.
From outside, the solar chimneys look like walls of glass covering about half of the west and east sides of the building nearly from top to bottom. Behind each is a shaft striped with diagonal black fins.
Those "heat shelves" capture the sun's energy before it enters the building, heating up the chamber. On the day of our tour, it felt warm inside the shaft, as the vents connecting it to the rest of the building and at the top of the chimney were closed while workers completed some of the finishing touches of construction.
Nerys Rau, George Brown College's director of design and construction, and Phil Silverstein, a partner with architecture firm Moriyama Teshima, stand inside the east solar chimney in Limberlost Place. (Emily Chung/CBC)When the system is running, hot air rises and escapes through an open vent at the top of the chimney. That pulls outside air through open windows in the building and draws it through the rooms and hallways into the open vents at the bottom of the solar chimney, Silverstein said.
"Cool air would just be flushing through here. It's like adding a cooling blanket to the outside of the building."
In winter, the chamber is closed up and the fins and glass allow it to heat up, also improving energy efficiency. "This gets really hot," Silverstein said, "and it's like a heating blanket on the edges of the building."
To open and close the windows as needed to keep the system running in the right mode, the college is counting on sustainability and architecture students who started classes in the new building this month.
Nerys Rau, the college's director of design and construction, said the goal is to give the students some control over their environment and let them participate in what's happening in the building.
It's intended as a "living lab," she added, so students learn not just "in" the building "but from the building and about the building, and understand the types of building that they themselves will be designing in the future."
Silverstein said to meet the environmental standards that the college wanted, all options to reduce energy had to be considered — and one of those options was to rely on passive ventilation as much as possible.
O'Brien said many office and institutional buildings such as colleges and hospitals need cooling even when outdoor temperatures are as low as 5 C or 10 C, thanks to the heat produced by so many people and equipment such as computers and lighting, along with heat absorbed from the sun by the building's exterior materials.
"It makes no sense in the spring and fall to use air conditioning when all we have to do is increase the air flow from outside," he added.
With the solar chimneys, Limberlost Place is expected to operate "passively" — without air conditioning, heating and mechanically powered ventilation (other than ceiling fans) for about half the year.
— Emily Chung
Old issues of What on Earth? are here. The CBC News climate page is here.
Check out our podcast and radio show. In our newest episode: They're popping up on balconies across Europe. You can even buy them at IKEA in Germany. Solar panels designed to hang over a railing and plug into your wall. We hear about what's driving the trend, and what's standing in the way of bringing balcony solar to Canada.What On EarthWill the balcony solar craze make it to Canada?
What On Earth drops new podcast episodes every Wednesday and Saturday. You can find them on your favourite podcast app or on demand at CBC Listen. The radio show airs Sundays at 11 a.m., 11:30 a.m. in Newfoundland and Labrador.
Kathryn McRuer-Nicol studies the impact of climate change on salt marshes. This summer, it got too hot for her team to do field work in Quebec. The irony has made her rethink her approach to science. Read her First Person. Have a compelling personal story about climate change you want to share with CBC News? Pitch a First Person column here.
Check the CBC News Climate Dashboard for live updates on wildfire smoke and active fires across the country. Set your location for information on air quality and to find out how today's temperatures compare to historical trends.
(CBC)Reader FeedbackLast week, Kiera Osborne wrote about borrowing and swapping clothing as an eco-friendly trend among stars and ordinary people alike. Anna Turns, senior environment editor of The Conversation UK, pointed out that in Sweden, there's an entire shopping mall filled with second-hand stuff, and you can read about it in The Conversation.
Picking up on the previous discussion about the lack of affordable EVs in Canada, Richard Bird of London, Ont., wrote: "The automotive companies have been promoting SUVs and pickup trucks for decades because the profit margin on those vehicles is higher than compacts and sedans … the automotive companies stating they can't meet the EV targets because consumers are not willing to buy EVs is because those same companies have convinced consumers that SUVs and pickups are the ideal vehicle for us. They could use those same marketing efforts to convince us that small EVs are the ideal vehicle for us."
Share your story: Do you live in a household that doesn't own a car or truck? We're interested to hear about your experiences. What community do you live in? Why don't you own a car or truck? What options do you use to get around? We're interested in doing a future article about this.
Write us at whatonearth@cbc.ca (and send photos there too!)
The Big Picture: Where are the monarch butterflies now?
(Gregory Mitchell/Environment and Climate Change Canada)Monarch butterflies hatched in Canada migrate up to 5,000 kilometres to Mexico each fall to spend the winter. But exactly how do they fly there? Until now, scientists had only a fuzzy idea. Now, for the first time, they — and you — can see exactly where at least some monarchs are and what route they're taking on their migration.
Canadian researchers put tiny Bluetooth "airtags" on 30 monarchs (the tiny rectangle on the back of the monarch in the photo above) — 15 males and 15 females — at Long Point Bird Observatory in Ontario. As each butterfly flies within about 100 metres of an iPhone, it's detected and that data point is sent back to a group of scientists led by Greg Mitchell and Ana Diaz at Environment and Climate Change Canada.
Each monarch's track can be seen on a free iPhone app called Project Monarch Science or an Android app called Project Monarch, which also lets Android users participate in detecting tagged monarchs. Each coloured line in the animated map above represents an individual monarch, and each point is where it was detected by a phone between Sept. 12 and 17.
"I can't stop looking at my phone to see where these monarchs are!" Mitchell admits.
As of Wednesday, some had made it past Louisville, Ky. Many were detected as they flew near boats, highways or through cities. The researchers hope seeing the path the monarchs take will help them figure out what habitats need protection to ensure their migration is successful.
— Emily Chung
Hot and bothered: Provocative ideas from around the webThrough jiggling atoms and colourful animations, Quanta Magazine explains why carbon dioxide — far from the most abundant molecule up there — is a potent greenhouse gas. (And the jiggling is key to that!)
"We have to solarize everything we possibly can," said Claudine Bichet, the deputy mayor of Bordeaux, France. By the end of 2026, the city will produce 41 per cent of its own power, thanks largely to 60,000 square meters of solar panels. Here are some of the interesting places where it's installing them (including the roof of a submarine base).
Plastic surgery has gone mainstream, with open conversations about it among celebrities and on social media. That can reduce stigma about this kind of non-essential surgery. But Atmos suggests it can have negative impacts on equity — and the climate.
It's above, below, and around us — and a less-discussed culprit in climate change. The production of cement accounts for eight percent of global CO2 emissions — more than aviation. But as data scientist Hannah Ritchie and Leah Ellis, CEO of Sublime Systems, discuss on the podcast Solving for Climate, that doesn't mean our grey concrete can't become greener.
Canadian electric locomotive built to work in –40 C winters
Cando Rail & Terminals presented its new retrofitted locomotive powered by a lithium-ion battery at the Cando Southlands Rail Yard in Strathcona County, Alta., last week. (Emily Fitzpatrick/CBC)A new kind of electric-powered locomotive designed to handle Canada's harsh winters was unveiled near Edmonton this week.
The zero-emission locomotive, powered by a lithium-ion battery, was shown off at a railyard in Strathcona County, just east of Edmonton, on Wednesday. It was produced by Cando Rail & Terminals, a company that provides rail operating services and terminal infrastructure, with offices in Winnipeg and Brandon, Man.
The locomotive is the first of its kind in Canada, according to Cando CEO Brian Cornick.
He said electric locomotives exist elsewhere in the world, including in the United States, but they are not capable of withstanding Canada's harsh winters. Cornick said this new locomotive is designed to take on the frigid temperatures found north of the Canada-U.S.border.
"This thing will withstand the Edmonton winters. It absolutely will," Cornick said.
"Building this in Canada was very important. Nothing else would work here."
Cornick said a former diesel locomotive was retrofitted with a lithium-ion battery and tested over the past year in the Winnipeg area, and was able to tow up to 50 full railcars in conditions colder than –40 C.
"We wanted to see … the most extreme weather you can find, and Winnipeg never fails to cause that," he said.
WATCH | First-of-its-kind battery-powered locomotive: A battery-powered train engine is helping a Canadian rail company reduce its emissions. A new lithium-ion powered locomotive designed by Cando Rail and Terminals is ditching diesel in favour of zero emissions. It has already been tested for Canadian winters, and the company's CEO hopes this is just the first of many.He said battery range will not be an issue for the new locomotive, as its job will be to handle short-distance railcar switching operations that the company provides in railyards and closed-loop locations.
Since the locomotive is expected to function entirely within railyards, Cornick said it will be powered by overhead electrical wires similar to streetcar systems found in cities like Toronto. He said it can also be plugged in like an electric car when it's not being used.
Cornick said 50 per cent of the funding for the project to develop the electric locomotive was provided by Emissions Reduction Alberta (ERA), a non-profit organization funded by the province. ERA has said it committed $2 million to the locomotive project.
Cornick said the next step for Cando is to find a manufacturing partner to build a fleet of these electric locomotives over the next decade.
He said that it will initially take a year and a half for one electric locomotive to be fabricated, but he hopes there will be a manufacturing company that could get that production time down to six months, and that the process becomes more efficient over time.
The company hopes to replace its entire stock of locomotives eventually, Cornick said.
"We have a fleet of 110 diesel-electric locomotives. Our dream is to swap them all out."
According to Cando's website, each of these new locomotives is expected to reduce up to 470 tonnes of CO2 per year, as well as cut energy costs by 60 per cent.
— Cameron MacCuish
Thanks for reading. If you have questions, criticisms or story tips, please send them to whatonearth@cbc.ca.
What on Earth? comes straight to your inbox every Thursday.
Editors: Emily Chung and Hannah Hoag | Logo design: Sködt McNalty