Kassandra Starkell and Martin Martyniak were looking for a well-located home with a few green features. So they were surprised to find themselves moving into a fully solar-powered, net-zero house in Blatchford—the largest planned carbon-neutral community in North America, located on 500 acres in the heart of Edmonton.

Kassandra and Martin, who love the vibrancy of living downtown, say Blatchford “ticked all the boxes.”

“In terms of the ‘Blatchfordness’ of it, we really liked the energy efficiency that was coming with the homes and specifically the Landmark home,” said Kassandra.

Blatchford units built by Landmark Homes—a company that pioneered net-zero homes in Edmonton 16 years ago—come equipped with 9 to 10 kilowatts of rooftop solar, an energy-efficient air-source heat pump, triple-paned windows, and high insulation levels—all standard, thanks to Blatchford’s green building code.

“I didn’t think that we were in that price bracket to get a net-zero home or even just a home with solar. So that was a really happy coincidence,” says Kassandra.

Landmark townhomes in Blatchford are currently listed between C$644,900 and $672,900.

‘Wildly Ambitious’ Beginnings

Blatchford’s genesis traces back to around 2008, when the City of Edmonton was locked in a political battle to close its downtown airport, and then-Mayor Stephen Mandel was looking for a new vision.

“Mandel wasn’t really a green mayor in any significant way,” urban planner Tom Young told the VOLTS podcast about Blatchford. But the city had a fairly progressive council, and this was their way to set a new vision for the land, challenging those nostalgic for a city airport that was well past its due date.

“It was wildly ambitious; the idea of a carbon-neutral community was very far out there,” said Anne Stevenson, Edmonton city councillor for the O-day’min ward, which includes the neighbourhood of Blatchford.

Stevenson, a former planner by profession, admitted she was skeptical at first.

The city looked far and wide for bold, new sustainable strategies, receiving proposals to build a biomass power plant and even a deep geothermal project on the site. When the dust settled, council finally landed on the concept of using a proven geoexchange district energy sharing system to heat the community with renewable energy.

Gas is not allowed in Blatchford.

Geoexchange, Not Geothermal

It’s not technically “geothermal,” though most people call it that. Geoexchange is a much simpler idea: it uses underground loops to harvest the heat of the Earth, and then ground-source heat pumps amplify that to heat homes.

This is proven technology. There are more than 100,000 geoexchange systems already installed in Canada, but it’s still rare to see it used in a district energy system.

Here, they drilled 570 bore holes, 150 metres deep beneath a lake-sized drainage pond. This feeds into “Energy Centre One,” a building equipped with a very large heat pump that further upgrades the temperature of the fluids before distributing it to the homes of Blatchford, where ground-source heat pumps heat and cool most of the homes.

Josh Culling, an early Blatchford resident, recalled his first experience with the system. “The day we moved into our house, there was a heat wave,” he said. “We walked into the house and it was like walking into a walk-in freezer.”

Culling added he’s “never forgotten that moment.”

Blatchford is located in the most northerly big city in North America, where in recent years, heat waves have seen temperatures reach 37° C— astonishing heights for locals used to a much cooler climate.

Two other early residents of Blatchford, Heather MacKenzie and Justin Wheler, who experienced heat pumps for the first time there, said the system is very effective amid temperature extremes. “You’re just sitting at home blissful,” MacKenzie said.

“We don’t notice the hot days or the cold days other than when we go outside,” Wheler added.

Aiming For 30,000 Residents by 2042

“The vision is 30,000 Edmontonians living a sustainable lifestyle, carbon neutral, using renewable energy,” said Tom Lumsden, the City of Edmonton’s development manager for Blatchford. The city chose to act as the developer to set high standards for sustainability in the neighbourhood. Blatchford’s green building code is about 70% more stringent than standard codes, Lumsden said.

The “incredibly efficient” homes are nearly net-zero, councillor Stevenson added. “What I hear most often from residents is that they love their air conditioning in the summer.”

The bar for Blatchford’s green building code has been raised periodically since its inception, and as of 2024, it’s now nearly equivalent to the top tier of the National Building Code—the Alberta edition.

The code applies to all of the homes in Blatchford, but builders like Landmark are taking it one step further, offering only fully net-zero homes powered by solar.

Uniquely, these homes also come with a 20-kilowatt-hour battery to store solar energy for later use. It’s part of a pilot program that will link about 100 batteries as a virtual power plant to sell peaking energy to the grid.

“The concept of net-zero then comes from the fact that when you net everything out, it doesn’t cost you anything,” Landmark founder Reza Nasseri said. “But as we said before, if you have batteries it’s a double whammy.”

Designed to Counter Sprawl

Blatchford demonstrates an emerging version of people-centred urban design, with many amenities built right at the outset.

“We have a playground already, they have an outdoor rink, there’s a walking path and a stormwater pond with lots of ducks and wildlife around it,” said resident Justin Wheler.

Due to its central location in Edmonton and good planning—there’s even a local grocery store—Blatchford already has what many suburban neighbourhoods wait years, even decades, for, Stevenson said.

It has a light rail transit station within walking distance and bike baths being built into the layout, Wheler said. “You see kids learning to bike and scoot around the neighbourhood.”

The neighborhood also has a community garden and a small apple orchard that’s “pretty special,” according to resident Heather MacKenzie.

Another special feature is its location 10 minutes from the city’s core, Lumsden said.

“It’s about the size of the existing downtown,” Lumsden explained. “The old adage from real estate is ‘location, location, location.’ We have that bar none.”

“The fact that we’re doing something really cool with the sustainability features is the cherry on top.”

Given the location efficiency, residents will save time and money, while producing as few as half as many emissions due to their shorter commute distances. Even more emissions are avoided when you consider the energy efficiency of Blatchford homes.

Overcoming Sluggish Growth

Blatchford’s growth seemed sluggish in the beginning as consumers slowly began to understand the value proposition. In April 2024, a city audit concluded that Blatchford’s managers needed to better track and report progress on its goals, with city councillors expressing disappointment with the pace of development, CBC News reported. At the time, 84 homes were occupied, up from 20 over four years. Lumsden said many more lots were being sold.

But the development has also weathered a downturn in housing, a global pandemic, and supply chain issues that have plagued many industries.

Despite it all, Lumsden said Blatchford is doing very well, comparing it to any other greenfield development.

“We are actually less than seven years from an active airport to somebody living here,” he said. “I know suburban neighbourhoods that have taken the better part of a decade to go from farmer’s field to where people are living.”

Recently, things seem to be taking off. A 90-townhouse project is under way, four- to six-story buildings are coming, and another 90-unit apartment-style development is about to begin construction.

In the early stages, mostly townhouses were built, and some were fairly expensive. But the plan was always to build a diversity of housing formats— townhomes, condos, and apartments with mixed commercial use.

Stevenson said the plan is to incorporate 16% affordable housing to help address the housing crisis and meet climate objectives, which “is truly phenomenal.”

“It’s easy to brag about Blatchford,” said resident Mackenzie. “There are few places in the city where you can get a net-zero row home at a great price point.”

“I know some of the homes here are not super affordable, but when I looked at a net-zero row home one neighbourhood over, it was $200,000 more than ours.”

Bigger builders are coming to Blatchford, such as Qualico, which is building the most affordable homes so far.

This story is part of The 89 Percent Project, an initiative of the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now.