In anticipation of our 2009 Cleantech Issue, we bring you a web exclusive look at the continent’s greenest hotel: The Planet Traveler Hotel in Kensington Market, Toronto. Photo courtesy of the MaRS Discovery District.

According to Tom Rand, if you’re not talking low carbon, you’re greenwashing. Organic granola and recycled toilet paper might be apt gestures for the small-scale eco-consumer, but they just don’t cut it in the big leagues. “If ‘green’ has anything to do with sustainability and protecting ecosystems,” he challenges, “then it had better be dealing with climate change, and it had better be dealing with it in a significant way.”

The big talk by the cleantech lead at the MaRS Discovery District, and the man behind VCi Greenfunds and Green Bonds, is backed by bigger action. Rand’s latest project is what he claims to be “the continent’s greenest hotel”, which Corporate Knights first told you about in October 2008. Dismissing low-flow showerheads and “please reuse your towel” signs as green feel-good marketing, the Planet Traveler hostel in Toronto’s Kensington Market is upping the ante in terms of energy reduction, cutting its emissions by 75%. This is a feat that Tom Rand believes any building can and should achieve in the immediate future using sustainable technologies that already exist.  Moreover, he claims to have found a magic bullet, alleging that these carbon cuts can be made without spending a dime.

Speaking to a full house at Toronto's MaRS Centre on July 9, 2009, Tom Rand explains why he has decided to focus on buildings in his approach to climate change. “Buildings are responsible in our large urban centres for between a half and three quarters of our carbon emissions. That’s a huge part of our footprint,” he says. “In terms of climate change, buildings are the lowest hanging fruit, as far as I can tell.”

Rand began reaching for this fruit when he and his business partner Anthony Arts set their sights on an empty shell of a building in 2006. The dilapidated structure quickly became a testing bed for clean technologies, as they fully restored the historic building from the inside out. In the initial stages of his project’s development, he proudly admits to looking and leaping at the same time. “When I first started, I didn’t know what the guts of a building did,” he recalls. “I didn’t know geothermal from a hole in the ground.”

Rand has come a long way since then, transforming the Planet Traveler hostel into a kind of cleantech gallery. Utilizing solar-voltaic and solar-thermal heating, geo-exchange, 100% LED lighting, and a wastewater heat re-capturing unit called the Powerpipe, it boasts a rich collection of renewables. It also seeks to educate. The geo-exchanger and Powerpipe are featured behind a glass wall in the basement, and the rooftop mezzanine bar offers a full view of the solar panels in the foreground of Toronto’s skyline.

Informing the public about cleantech is crucial for the technology’s survival, and Rand makes the case for geothermal as the heavy hitter in the low carbon revolution. Using the simple example of a refrigerator, he enthusiastically explains how a geo-exchanger’s heat pump effectively moves existing heat from the ground and the building from one area to another at 500% efficiency – a percentage not even natural gas can match.

Initially, the biggest obstacle for Planet Traveler was its geo-exchange system. In the heart of the city, surrounded by hundred year-old infrastructure with virtually no extra space to occupy, Rand had to look to an adjacent alley to bury the pipe. Following several meetings and discussions with the City of Toronto, he was able to strike a deal to use the public space. Wanting to spare others from the excessive paperwork he had to endure, he set up a task force with the city to open up laneways and parks for the future installation of renewable infrastructure. This “cookie-cutter” design will allow for similar projects to pop up virtually anywhere in the metropolis, defying old notions that geothermal is only reserved for properties with vast, unoccupied space.

While installation of renewable infrastructure is expensive up front, (the incremental costs for Planet Traveler were around $200,000) it is justifiable by what Rand calls “patient capital”. The payback period is not set in stone; he estimates between four and six years to break even on initial costs. While this may not be the kind of immediate return many investors would like to see, for Rand, it is well worth it. With a total predicted energy reduction of 75-80%, it will work out to savings in the ball-park of $2,500 per month.

Rand expands his idea of patient capital into the urban built environment, by estimating a 30% reduction in total Canadian emissions if all buildings were to take on similar retro-fits. The obstacles to widespread adoption are plentiful, he recognizes, but they are not concrete. Many of these obstacles Rand attributes to habits, politics, and economics, what he calls “soft problems”. For Rand, a carbon tax, widespread education campaigns, and third party support for green infrastructure via green bonds or a geo-utility are sure-fire ways “to build a cleantech economy in Canada without spending a dime.”

Of course, more than a few dimes will be spent initially and the money has to come from somewhere. Now that banks and governments have recession on the brain, coming up with the necessary capital for the installations may be a challenge. Logistically, the costs needed to cover the retrofits for Planet Traveler worked out to 5% of the total real-estate value. Borrowing that money at market rates means the project will be cash-flow positive from day one. If the banks won’t lend, says Rand, then the government should back the loans. After all, most of the technologies (with the exception of the Powerpipe) are made in Canada. Building the cleantech economy in Canada should be high up on the country’s “to do” list, he says.

“In my view, low carbon technology is today what silicon was back in1960,” he says. “If any country wants to participate in the next economic revolution they had better start dealing with clean-tech and they had better start dealing with it quickly.”

The view from Planet Traveler is promising, and with any luck the fire Tom Rand is starting under Canada’s cleantech industry will catch. In the meantime, you can likely find him on the roof of the continent’s greenest hotel, sipping a martini, and thinking up new ways to fuel the fire.

For a full video of Tom Rand’s talk Green or Green Wash? Lessons from Building North America’s Greenest Hotel in Toronto, go here.