News Roundup

Builders promise new ‘zero-net energy’ building

By CityBusiness staff report
2006-10-23

KENNER — M2-USA Advanced Building Systems, EMO Energy Solutions and The Heston Group today announced a zero-net energy office building is in the works.

At 11 a.m. Tuesday, EMO Energy Solutions, with several partners including M2-USA Advanced Building Systems and The Heston Group, will join in a groundbreaking ceremony to start building a 1,600-square-foot, two-story office building for EMO at 3125 Lausat St. in Metairie.

The building will be constructed with M2 panels reportedly impervious to hurricane force winds and water. This European technology is available for the first time in the United States via the company’s new $10-million Kenner plant.

“Along with solar panels and other energy saving strategies, we will have an office building that will generate more power than it consumes,” said Eric Oliver, president of EMO Energy Solutions.

EMO, a Falls Church, Va.-based energy efficiency and sustainable design consulting company, has been recommending and designing alternative building materials since 1998. Initial plans were to construct the first zero-net energy building for its Virginia headquarters but Hurricane Katrina changed plans.

“EMO opened an office in Slidell a few months before Katrina to serve the Gulf Coast Region,” Oliver said. “We were just getting started when Katrina destroyed our building. We turned this loss into an opportunity and found some land in Jefferson Parish and decided to move forward with our first ever zero-net energy building.”

EMO entered into a partnership with Advanced Building Systems, a Kenner-based company with exclusive rights for manufacturing and distributing the hurricane, flood and termite resistant M2 building system. Instead of Sheetrock and plywood, M2 manufactures structural panels using reinforced galvanized steel, expanded corrugated polystyrene and a fast-drying concrete. Besides making a structure resistant to most natural disaster, the M2 building system also provides an energy efficient structure that can save up to 50 percent in heating and cooling costs.

“We are ecstatic to have been chosen by EMO to build their Louisiana headquarters,” said Tony Fernandez, vice president of Advanced Building Systems. “Between EMO and M2, we are truly introducing an entirely new way of thinking and building in Louisiana and all along the Gulf Coast. What we are doing with a two-story office building can easily be transferred into single homes or apartment buildings.”•