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A few weeks ago, Ladena Racine and her family moved into the first building to open at Victoria's Dockside Green, Canada's greenest condo development.

From the outside, the building, located on former industrial land adjacent to Victoria's Inner Harbour, looks pretty much like any new condominium.

"If you didn't know it was a green building, you'd just walk in and think it was another condo," says Ms. Racine, a 29-year-old elementary teacher.

Certainly, the immediate environment is not particularly green — at least not yet. While the first few buildings are finished and residents have moved in, a large part of the six-hectare project — which will eventually have 26 buildings and 2,500 residents — is still under construction or a sea of mud. And the adjacent Inner Harbour is still ringed with unsightly shipyards and old industrial buildings.

But if you look closely, you see that Dockside Green is a groundbreaking development, setting standards that could eventually become the norm for new residential buildings across Canada.

That's what appealed to Ms. Racine and her Web designer husband Neil Tran, 33, who have always been interested in environmental issues and wanted "a nice clean start" for their one-year-old daughter, Cyan.

When they heard about Dockside Green two years ago, Ms. Racine said, "we were just amazed with all the special features the building was going to have." On top of that, she says, "we believe in what it stands for."

Their $400,000 condo, just under 1,000 square feet, offers two bedrooms and a balcony in addition to its eco-friendly design.

Some of the green attributes of the finished buildings are no big surprise and can be found in many new structures: All units have motion sensing switches, low flow faucets and energy efficient appliances. The rooftops are green, with flower beds and communal gardens, while there is on-site parking for vehicles owned by car sharing services.

Other concepts, however, are novel.

The entire complex will soon have its own sewage and wastewater treatment plant that will return water to flush toilets in each suite, and will also be used to feed a creek and pond system that runs through the development.

Also under construction is an on-site biomass gasification plant, to turn waste wood into energy that will provide heat and hot water to all the units.

And each unit has a "smart" meter that monitors water, heat and electricity consumption, while a novel ventilation system brings in 100 per cent fresh air to each individual suite, rather than pushing air in through the corridors, as is done in most condos.

Even the construction is being done in as environmentally friendly a manner as possible: More than 90 per cent of construction waste is recycled, and the cement used in the building process is specially constituted to contain fly ash, a material that reduces carbon-dioxide emissions and strengthens the material.

Dockside Green, which is being built on cleaned-up industrial land that was once first nations property, is also being designed to be socially responsible. Its contractors have set up programs to help aboriginal workers gain construction skills, and jobs, by working on the project.

The $600-million complex will eventually house about 2,500 people; the first 98 apartments welcomed their owners in March. All the buildings on the site won't be finished until about 2014.

Developer Joe Van Belleghem, whose Windmill West development company is building Dockside Green along with partner VanCity credit union, says it is wrong to assume that environmentally positive attributes make a building more expensive to put up and run.

If it is planned and built carefully, higher costs in some areas can easily be offset by gains in others, he says. At Dockside Green, construction costs are about 1 per cent to 1.5 per cent higher than a normal project, but are more than matched by other savings, Mr. Van Belleghem says.

"A lot of things you do from an environmental perspective actually reduce your costs," he says, especially if architects, engineers, builders and landscapers work together to make sure a building is as efficient as possible.

For example, at Dockside Green the south- and west-facing windows have awnings and exterior blinds, insulation is increased, and special glazing is installed — all at higher cost — but less heating is required and there's no need for air conditioning, so other mechanical expenses are reduced.

Similarly, building the on-site sewage treatment plant is costly, but the complex will not have to pay sewage fees to the city because it doesn't use the municipal system.

And the development's energy efficient lighting, and biomass heating system, help reduce electricity consumption by about 60 per cent compared with a normal building, generating enormous savings over decades of use.

In Dockside Green's case, there have also been huge savings on marketing costs, Mr. Van Belleghem said, partly because there has been so much free publicity about the complex and its environmental features. And the green features have also made it far easier to get the municipal approvals which are a big up-front cost for most developers.

All those savings could be achieved at any green project anywhere in Canada, he insists, if builders would jump on the green bandwagon. Even a downtown Toronto condo could integrate a similar sewage plant or biomass energy facility, he says, as they take up remarkably small footprints.

It's that attitude that makes Dockside Green "clearly pioneering work," says Monika Winn, as associate professor of business strategy and sustainability at the University of Victoria.

It has gained "almost icon status" in Western Canada, she said, because "it is not only visionary, it is not [just] a drawing board exercise, it is actually happening."

While truly innovative, it is also a commercial venture that is coming in on time and on budget, and will make money, she notes. "That flies in the face of those who still assert that sustainability is not compatible with the way we do business."

And that undoubtedly will put pressure on the rest of the building industry, which will find "the standards have been ramped up," Prof. Winn says.

Others are a little more cautious. Maureen Enser, executive director of the Urban Development Institute of Canada, says that while many developers have been awakened to the value of environmentally friendly building, roadblocks often come from governments that aren't flexible enough to allow innovative projects.

"We are really in a state of evolution," Ms. Enser says. "You can try new things and new ideas, but you have to have the support of municipalities and other levels of government to allow you to try these new technologies. Often the brick wall comes [with] local government processes."

Still, Mr. Van Belleghem is certain more buildings such as Dockside Green will go up in the coming years, and not just in green-tinged British Columbia.

"There's an enthusiasm in the air," he says. "It's going to be infectious throughout the rest of North America."

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ECO-FRIENDLY FEATURES

While Dockside Green has dramatic innovations that set it apart from other buildings — such as a sewage treatment plant and a biomass-based heating facility — there are dozens of other eco-friendly features:

• Awnings and remote-controlled exterior blinds, along with "low-E" glazing, make air conditioning unnecessary;
• Balconies have rainwater storage for watering plants;
• Native plants used for landscaping don't require irrigation;
• Interiors are painted with low-emission paints; carpets are also low-emission;
• Buildings have bicycle storage and parking stalls for shared vehicles;
• Washing machines are low energy users, as are condensing driers (which don't require any expensive venting);
• Floors are made of sustainably grown bamboo;
• Common areas have low-energy LED lighting;
• Each new resident gets a six-month supply of eco-friendly cleaning products.

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INNOVATIVE SUPPLIERS

Dockside Green is using products and materials from innovative Canadian companies, whenever possible. Here's a look at some of the suppliers:

• Nexterra Energy: This Vancouver company is building the biomass gasification system. It takes wood waste — such as scraps from construction and old pallets — and breaks it down into combustible gas, which is then burned cleanly to provide heat and hot water to the buildings. Two or three truckloads of waste each week is enough to fuel the system, which has a backup gas burner.
• Zenon: This Oakville, Ont., company now owned by General Electric Co. is supplying the filtering systems that help clean water in the on-site sewage treatment plant. The membrane bioreactor system draws water through microscopic pores, filtering out solids, bacteria and viruses.
• Sol-air Systems: Based in Kelowna, B.C., Sol-air is supplying the on-site sewage treatment plant with air decontamination equipment to eliminate any smells. The chemical-free system uses ultraviolet light to create short-lived free radicals that oxidize contaminants in the air.
• Triton Logging: This Victoria company is supplying reclaimed wood for some of the construction. Triton uses a remotely operated submersible to harvest wood from forests that have been flooded by reservoirs over the past century and preserved by cold water.
• Reliable Controls: Also of Victoria, Reliable Controls makes the monitoring system that allows residents to control the temperature of their units and keep track of energy and water consumption. The device also monitors outside temperature and calculates overall greenhouse-gas emissions for each unit. Owners can log on to the system via the Internet, even when not at home. Two other Victoria companies, Houle Controls and Syscor Research & Development, customized the system.