Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 246

I have a very close friend (Peter Vogel) who is in the solar business. He runs business development for a company called Otter Energy . And by volume, I believe they are the largest in Ontario. Since 2009, they have installed over 350,000 panels.

So when Peter and I hang out, I get the benefit of learning about solar. And he is great at reminding me that installing panels on the roof of buildings in Ontario makes a ton of sense from both an environmental and financial standpoint.

Generally speaking, the amount of benefit you will see depends on the building's ratio of roof area to overall building area. Low-rise buildings with a lot of roof area (think industrial assets), are absolute no brainers. But it can also work very well on many other asset classes, including mid-rise multi-family.

Here are some high-level figures that he recently walked me through:

• As a rule of thumb, solar in Ontario typically generates between 12-14 kWh's per year per square foot of roof area (usable flat roof).

• The average payback period for an install is usually somewhere between 4.5 to 7 years.

• However, on income producing properties, the permanent decrease in operating expenses and the corresponding increase in net operating income (NOI) will increase your asset value on day one.

• Consider spending $100k on solar panels to increase your NOI -- through lower electricity costs -- by $10k. If you were to then capitalize this increase in NOI by 5%, it would mean your asset value has right away increased by $200k. If the cap rate for this asset is even lower, say 4%, the increase goes up to $250k.

• These multiples can get even better with larger installs. Here are some numbers from a real-world 100,000 sf commercial building in Ontario. In this case, the solar system cost about $800k (net) and resulted in annual operating cost savings of about $140k. This means, that at a 5% cap rate, the owner spent $800k to increase the value of their asset by $2.8 million on day one.

• Of course, in addition to all of this, you get long-term energy cost certainty. That's worth something too.

The business case is compelling. So I think more building owners should be looking at solar. We are certainly looking at it from a development perspective. If you're interested in learning more, feel free to reach out to my friend . There are a lot of details that help strengthen the case for solar, including depreciation allowances and tax credits.

In my humble and partially biased opinion, two of the greatest places on earth to snowboard are the French Alps and Utah. I say the French Alps because, after 13 years of annual trips , I have yet to find better food and better après parties . And I say Utah because it's, like, pretty hard to beat the greatest snow on earth.

Well today, both of these places were announced as future hosts of the Winter Olympics. France will host the games in 2030 (once it has successfully met certain conditions) and Utah will host the games in 2034 . This is exciting.

But it was also entirely expected.

France was the preferred choice since June . And Utah was the only choice for 2034. To host the Winter Games, you generally need to have at least two things: money and snow. And right now, fewer places want to spend the former on something that may or may not generate an ROI, and fewer places are getting the latter.

Remember this post looking at the impact of climate change on the Winter Olympics?

Because of these challenges, there is talk of the IOC adopting a permanent rotation of Winter Olympic cities. And Utah has been eagerly positioning itself to be one of the places. Biases aside, this feels like an obvious choice. Salt Lake City has some of the best and most accessible snowboarding in the world (SLC is a great airport) and -- most importantly -- it still snows there.

Photo by  Alex Moliski  on  Unsplash

If you do a search for the number of electric vehicle charging stations in the US, you'll likely get a number somewhere around 160,000 . But to better understand what this means, you'll probably want to ask a few follow-up questions:

• Are these individual charging ports (for a single vehicle) or are these stations (locations with multiple charging ports)?

• How many of these chargers are private versus publicly-accessible?

• And how many of these are DC fast, versus just level 2? Level 2 is what most people have at home (I think), whereas DC charging is what you need if you're stopping on the side of the road and need to supercharge your car in 20-30 minutes.

Usually the biggest fear with EVs is range anxiety. We have come to expect that we'll be able to find a gas station when we need it, but, for the most part, we don't yet feel that way about EV charging stations.

So for this concern, the more precise question would be: How many publicly-accessible DC-fast charging stations are there in the US? This is the filter that gives you stations that would be most comparable to how gas stations function today.

The answer, according to the US Department of Energy , is about 10,597 stations and 44,160 charging ports. And according to Bloomberg Green , this puts the US on track to have public fast-charging sites outnumber gas stations in about 8 years.

Of course, it's probably safe to assume that the pace of EV adoption will only increase. And that means that this flip could happen well before 8 years. In my mind, that's soon.