Seven years after construction started, a 34-acre plot of once-contaminated industrial land in the middle of the Ottawa River is being celebrated as the most sustainable community in Canada.

The master-planned development between downtown Ottawa and Gatineau, Que. uses post-industrial waste to heat homes and businesses in winter and the river itself to generate cooling in the summer.

The net effect is a zero-carbon energy system that will power the development for decades to come, said project engineer and developer Scott Demark.

“It’s a pretty massive victory,” said Demark, president of Zibi Community Utility, which operates as the development’s in-house energy provider.

He described the creation of Zibi’s net-zero energy system as a massive undertaking — one that more developers could replicate with the right government incentives and requirements in place.

“I wish everybody was doing this. I wish the rules were tighter so you had to do it,” he told CBC News.

But the federal government’s current approach to encouraging climate-friendly housing and construction, he said, is “not enough and it’s not fast enough.”

Jesse Helmer, a researcher studying climate-friendly housing policy at the Smart Prosperity Institute, said Canada needs federal government action to make buildings significantly more efficient in order to reach its national emissions reduction targets for 2030 and 2050.

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