Dorimène housing cooperative
One Québec City community is rewriting the rulebook to tackle rising energy costs and meet the growing demand for affordable housing.
Homes and buildings generate nearly 30% of annual global CO2 emissions and account for up to 40% of Canada’s national energy consumption. Fiducie foncière communautaire Québec received GMF Sustainable Affordable Housing funding to study heat recovery systems as well as a $500,000 pilot grant to support innovative GHG-reducing construction. As a result, the organization is able to provide some of the first affordable housing units with net-zero energy objectives at rents 59% lower than the median in the community of Dorimène.
Focused on a 16-unit housing cooperative where half the units are dedicated to vulnerable households, the pilot project combines conventional energy efficiency measures – such as thermal insulation and proper ventilation – with innovations including photovoltaic solar panels, heat recovery, geothermal energy storage and phytoremediation to achieve five-times lower than typical energy consumption. The approach is highly replicable and can scale easily to other municipalities across the country.
Achieving the net-zero energy objective leads to immediate savings, which has a real impact on the quality of life of the building’s residents. It illustrates how investing in energy-efficiency goals provides multiple social and economic benefits — creating jobs, meeting environmental objectives, and providing affordable and sustainable homes for residents.
Anticipated results
- 5 times lower total energy use intensity (TEUI) than a typical building
- 59% lower rents than the median for 8 of 16 units
- $14,637 in energy cost savings for the cooperative