South Landing Eco-District:
a Transformative Model for Sustainable Development in the Heart of Spokane
South Landing Eco-District:
a Transformative Model for Sustainable Development in the Heart of Spokane
New building techniques, materials and a sustainable shared energy model are central to the goal of making the Catalyst building one of the largest zero-energy buildings in North America and one of the first zero-carbon buildings to be certified by the International Living Future Institute (ILFI). Avista, McKinstry, Katerra, Michael Green Architecture, and Eastern Washington University are working together to demonstrate the future of buildings and create a more sustainable future for us all. The Scott Morris Center for Energy Innovation, neighboring the Catalyst building in South Landing, will pool and distribute energy to the Catalyst building and other facilities in an innovative energy-sharing model known as an Eco-District.
The technology that’s been integrated within the Eco-District lets the building operators share information with Avista about their energy needs. At the same time, Avista can provide information to building operators about grid operations such as when the demand for energy is at its highest. By encouraging building operators to actively manage energy loads and balance on-site energy demand, generation and storage in real-time, the impact on the grid is reduced and there is greater flexibility for the building operators and the utility.
Such flexibility lets the utility make the best use of the existing grid and delay costly construction to meet energy demand. In the end, this makes energy more affordable for everyone.
The Catalyst building and Scott Morris Center for Energy Innovation will each have substantial rooftop solar PV arrays. The Catalyst building will generate about 300,000 kwh/year, the equivalent number of kilowatts to power and sustain 27 average sized households per year. The balance will be provided via offsite properties using McKinstry’s solar grant program, providing renewables to partner properties while providing solar attributes for the Catalyst building.
South Landing will deliver the smartest and most efficient energy systems ever seen. But, that’s not enough. Zero-energy buildings are not uncommon.
In Spokane, where construction and rent costs leave very little wiggle room, South Landing embraces lean manufacturing and supply chain practices to deliver zero-energy and zero-carbon at code-minimum market costs. This is done through:
The Catalyst building was constructed using roughly 500 cross-laminated timber (CLT) panels. By sequestering carbon within the structural wood products for the lifetime of the building, carbon emissions are avoided by substituting wood for products such as steel and concrete which are energy-intensive to produce. A life cycle assessment of the building determined that the stored carbon in the building nearly makes up for the embodied emissions of construction.
The CLT used on this project was locally manufactured by Katerra, creating more than 100 highly-skilled jobs. CLT is a pre manufactured, prefabricated, engineered solid wood building material composed of Katerra-specified lumber (aka laminations) stacked crosswise at 90-degree angles in multiple layers (aka plies) and bonded together under high pressure using structural adhesives.
The project team estimates the Catalyst building utilized 4000 cubic meters of CLT and glulam wood products. The mass timber in this project stores 3713 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent and avoids estimated emissions of 1437 metric tons of CO2; the equivalent to taking roughly 1100 cars off the road for a year.
A further advantage to concrete or steel is the rapidly renewable nature of mass timber. According to the WoodWorks Calculator through the Wood Products Council, U.S. and Canadian forests are capable of regrowing the equivalent volume of wood on this project in just 11 minutes.
The lumber for the mass timber products that utilized CLT on this project is sourced by Katerra from working forests. The wood is harvested using sound ecological practices, and will be replenished for the next cycle of forest growth and harvested for use by future generations. Katerra sources the wood from forests and sawmill partners for manufacturing within their Spokane Valley CLT factory.
The energy required to operate the Spokane Eco-District facilities varies at any hour on any day, depending on the season, the weather, and the demand generated by varying occupancy on the campus. To meet this demand, the Morris Center as the campus mechanical “hub” can operate in several different modes. Campus facility operators switch between these modes by making specific, complex adjustments to equipment in the mechanical center. Specifically, they must manually adjust several dozen different mechanical valves in specific sequences, and do so without immediate, direct feedback of the effects of their adjustments.
To assist the operators keep energy production and consumption in perfect balance, we are developing a technical system to augment the operators as they go about making these manual adjustments. McKinstry is using “augmented reality” technology to overlay digital data in real time in a physical, spatial context, serving up relevant instructions and performance data when and where it is needed by the operators.
The operators’ use of the augmented reality system will:
Contact us with leasing inquiries or questions about the Catalyst project.
Allie Teplicky