GENSLER GOES GREEN
Company unveils ambitious climate goals for its buildings
Gensler, the international architecture firm, unveiled Tuesday an ambitious goal to eliminate all carbon emissions in its work by 2030. With its annual climate action plan, the firm broadened the scope of earlier climate action plans to look at not only the carbon impacts of operating the buildings, but of its choice of materials as well.
Buildings and construction account for 39 percent of the world’s energy-related carbon dioxide emissions, according to the World Green Building Council, which represents construction businesses. Those emissions are generated both by the energy used to manufacture and transport the materials used to build the structures and the energy they then use to stay air conditioned, lit and otherwise functional.
The Gensler plan is part of a growing movement calling for those carbon emissions to be brought down to zero, arguing that while it is a challenging target, failure to meet it would have devastating ramifications for the real estate industry, including investors, insurers, lenders, landlords and tenants.
“Occupants and building
owners are beginning to value the benefits of spaces and structures that are both sustainable and resilient — that use less energy, are built with healthier materials and can adapt to severe weather events,” the company’s co -chief executives, Diane Hoskins and Andy Cohen, wrote in the plan.
The momentum behind the effort is growing.
Larry Fink, chief executive of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, wrote this year in a letter to chief executives that its clients had begun to focus on the impact of climate change. “Climate risk is investment risk,” he said. “No issue ranks higher than climate change on our clients’ lists of priorities. They ask us about it nearly every day.”
Spencer Glendon, an economist focusing on the impacts of climate change with the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Massachusetts, has argued that the risks of climate change could have serious impacts on real estate values.
“If I were a lender, I would not invest in Florida or in Marin County, Calif., right now,” he said during the Urban Land Institute’s fall conference. “Once faith in the future safety of an area erodes, then business also erodes.”
Rive Taylor, who directs Gensler’s design resilience teams, pointed to Trammell Crow’s Hess Tower in Houston as an example of the premium tenants and investors place on sustainability. The office tower, completed in 2010, was downtown’s first building to achieve LEED’s highest rating awarded for green building strategies, according to its builder, Gilbane. In 2011, it sold for $442.5 million, setting both a record for the highest total amount and highest price per square foot paid for a Houston office building at a time.
“Trammell Crow was able to sell that building for twice what they built it for — because they had a very satisfied tenant,” Taylor said. “And whether it’s Hines, Trammell Crow, Skanska, they're all recognizing that there is a market value to both the tenants … and to investors.”
Developers have long focused on creating energy efficient buildings — buildings that, for example, create shade in ways that reduce the need for air conditioning or which generate renewable energy on site. But now there is also a focus on materials, which account for a large portion of a building’s carbon footprint.
Another innovation is the development of mass timber, a product created by gluing and stacking boards in alternating directions before being placing them under pressure. The resulting panels are strong enough to build towers.
Since trees, unlike concrete or steel, absorb carbon as they grow, engineered wood has the potential to be a green building material.
“Mass timber is a great example — it absorbs carbon,” Taylor said.
When Skanska built the Bank of America building, it reduced the carbon footprint of the concrete used by reusing fly ash — a coal byproduct that would have otherwise gone to a landfill — in place of some of the cement, Taylor said. Creating cement typically requires turning calcium carbonate into calcium oxide, a process that creates 8 percent of the world’s man-made carbon dioxide. Skanska uses a carbon calculator for all of its construction projects.
Another way of reducing carbon is by reusing buildings. Nine tenths of construction debris comes from demolishing old buildings, according to Environmental Protection Agency. So when a developer decides to reuse a building — whether it is to repurpose it, as is the case of the conversion of the former Barbara Jordan Post Office into a food, retail and live-event destination, or to renovate it, as seen in Gensler’s recent redesign of Brookfield Property’s Houston Center — they are not only saving a piece of history. They are also decreasing the amount of carbon used by new materials and reducing the amount of waste sent to landfills.
“If the past year has taught us anything, it’s how our society and world economy are interconnected,” Gensler’s Hoskins and Cohen wrote in their climate change plan. “The market is demanding a change in what and how we build, and that demand is now.”