Starbucks Canada is opening a new store this month in British Columbia outside Vancouver that was assembled in just six days using sustainable materials and near-zero construction waste.
"This is the new wave of construction technology," Gregor Robertson, former mayor of Vancouver and executive vice president of strategy at Nexii Building Solutions, told Cheddar. "Nexii manufactures our buildings off-site and then flat-packs them and ships them to the site and assembles them very rapidly."
On the surface at least, it looks like any old Starbucks drive-thru store, but beneath the familiar outer-shell is a new approach to commercial retail construction.
The building is LEED-certified — the international standard for green design — and built to reduce heating and cooling needs. According to Robertson, the Vancouver building represents a 20 percent reduction in "embodied carbon," which is the carbon embedded in the materials, and a 43 percent reduction in the "operating energy," which is the regular carbon footprint once it's up and running.
Robertson stressed that the stakes are high for coming up with new sustainable construction methods, given that buildings are responsible for just under 40 percent of global carbon emissions, according to the Canada Green Building Council.
"Buildings and construction are the number-one cause of the climate crisis," he said. "Our cities desperately need market solutions. That's why I got involved with Nexii when I finished my time as mayor."
Robertson said Nexii plans to extend this design approach to other types of buildings, including energy-intensive industrial facilities that use large amounts of steel and concrete.
He pushed back against the idea that green buildings are more expensive, and that quicker building-times and energy savings can make up the costs.
"Ultimately, we think we can produce more affordable buildings," he said.
The former mayor didn't shy away from calling for increased regulation in the space as well, including new rules for limiting embodied carbon in buildings.
"It's really about raising the standards in cities around the world," he said.
An independent watchdog within the IRS reports that while taxpayer services have vastly improved, the agency is still too slow to resolve identity theft cases. And National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins says those delays are “unconscionable.” Erin M. Collins said in the report released Wednesday that overall the 2024 filing season went smoothly, though IRS delays in resolving identity theft victim assistance cases are worsening. It took nearly 19 months to resolve self-reported identity theft cases as of January, and Wednesday's report states that now it takes 22 months to resolve these cases.
Amazon.com Inc. surpassed $2 trillion in market value for the first time in afternoon trading on Wednesday. The push higher for Amazon’s stock market valuation comes a little more than a week after Nvidia hit $3 trillion and briefly became the most valuable company on Wall Street. Nvidia’s chips are used to power many AI application and its valuation has soared as a result. Amazon has also been making big investments in AI as global interest has grown in the technology. Most of the company’s focus has been on business-focused products.
Climate change doesn’t just mean more extreme weather – it also leads to billions of dollars in lost productivity, tourism, and stresses infrastructure.
