2019 Sustainability Check-In
With 2020 just days away, it’s a good time to reflect on our big picture sustainability objectives as a firm, and acknowledge all that we have accomplished over the past year- keeping in mind our goal to be Carbon Neutral by 2030.
This year, our goal was to pass our Title 24 Energy models by a minimum of 10%. In 2019, we averaged a 13% compliance margin across our reporting portfolio.
Translating this information into our 2030 reporting and looking through the lens of the EUI (Energy Use Intensity) of our project portfolio, in 2019 we averaged a 68% reduction from baseline energy use. Although this did not meet the 2030 goal of a 70% reduction, we did improve by 4% over our 2018 reporting portfolio. Each year, we are moving closer and closer to the baseline target, which is rising to 80% in 2020.
This year, we also created an internal sustainability checklist to track project goals across a variety of phases. Our team is working on integrating conversations early on in the design process, outlining sustainability goals and ways to improve our building’s energy and thermal performance. We now use Sefaira, an energy tracking and modeling software, to perform energy and lighting studies for each of our projects – bringing energy performance into the design process at the project’s conception.
Furthermore, we now look at our projects in terms of their Carbon footprint, both operationally and embodied. Thinking more holistically about our project’s CO2 footprint, instead of just their EUI, allows us to weigh the gas and electric usage differently in each of our projects, giving us a better sense of how close we are to our 2030 Carbon Neutral goal. Stay tuned for an update on our carbon metrics in the first quarter of 2020!
