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Approximately 50 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions are produced every year, equal to 10,000 fully loaded aircraft carriers. Roughly 40% of these emissions are a direct result of the building and construction industry.
Factoring this information with the point that every week, the number of buildings constructed equals the city of Paris, it’s clear that there’s a heightened carbon embodiment issue. This is because the extraction, transportation, manufacturing, and installation of traditional building materials, such as concrete, utilize a large carbon embodiment. Not to mention that the carbon footprint of construction is often more than the emissions produced during the lifespan of a building.
Utilizing sustainable technology instead of harmful, non-green energy would help to reduce building owners’ contribution to climate change.
Solar technology is typically only attached to structures through rooftop solar panel installations. This typically lacks beauty and taste as constructors aren’t granted any creative control over the overall design. Other applications of solar panels have typically been limited by factors such as size and shape, making it challenging for solar to be mass-adopted.
In contrast to this common concern, Mitrex, a Toronto-based manufacturer, offers building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV), including aesthetically pleasing solar cladding, glass, roof, and more to make adoption of solar energy easy. The solar cladding technology utilizes a customizable facing layer that produces panels in a limitless range of colours and patterns overtop solar cells to provide a beautiful, energy-generating building envelope.
This technology encourages the adoption of sustainable solar energy, contributing to a carbon-neutral future—contrary to traditional, highly-carbonated building materials. Conventional building materials contribute to the growing climate crisis through various means such as extraction, manufacturing, transportation, and installation.
The fully automated Mitrex facility can produce tens of thousands of square feet of integrated solar materials each day, ensuring constructors are provided with an accessible and limitless range of solar materials to utilize creatively. The solar cladding features lightweight efficiency coupled with structural strength similar to concrete, without contributing to carbon emissions—unlike traditional materials.
When the cladding material has been finalized in its production, it is then rapidly delivered to construction sites, where the cladding material is fully installed with minimal disturbance to the workers on the job site. Façade materials can be integrated onto new and retrofitted infrastructure to allow for solar energy generation.
Through these sustainable efforts, Mitrex has largely been successful in minimizing carbon emissions. Mitrex’s mission of reversing the emissions of greenhouse gases in the face of the current climate crisis has come to fruition through advanced solar technology and lightweight, durable materials. This technology also largely contributes to the depreciation of a high carbon power grid, unlike most traditional building materials.
Mitrex technology is rapidly leading the future of building development in a sustainable direction. Several structures have already adopted this technology. Around the world, from Canada to the Middle East, structures plan to incorporate Mitrex solar technology, reinventing our global use of energy in an eco-friendly and sustainable manner. We hope this inspires many other countries to do the same.