Skidmore Owings & Merrill, the architectural firm behind New York’s upcoming Freedom Tower, has just announced its intention to build the worlds greenest office building. Located just outside of Paris, the Energy Plus building will be a zero-energy building, consuming no electricity other than what it produces itself. It will accomplish this by having more solar panels on its roof than any other building – producing enough energy to power the entire building and still feed extra back into the grid. Its unique cooling system will take cold water from the river Seine and pump it around the building – eliminating the need for a traditional air conditioner. The building will also utilize cutting edge insulation, reducing amount of electricity consumption per square meter of office space per year to 16 kilowatts, the lowest in the world for a building of its size.
The 70,000 square meter building will house around 5,000 occupants and is expected to cost approximately 25% to 30% more than a traditional ‘non’ green office building.