2030 Challenge Update: With 15 years to go, a lot still needs to be done to achieve the goals of the 2030 Challenge

by Jonathan McGaha | April 30, 2015 12:00 am

By now, you should be familiar with the fact that nearly half of all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are produced by the building sector, and mostly from the fossil-fuel generated energy needed to heat, cool and light buildings, and run equipment. Much of the responsibility is being placed on architects, engineers and planners who are planning and designing buildings that are disconnected from the natural environment, inefficient and require too much energy to operate. In response to this, Architecture 2030[1] issued the 2030 Challenge[2] in 2006, which calls for all new buildings and major renovations to meet high-performance targets and be carbon-neutral by 2030.

Architecture 2030 is a nonprofit, non-partisan and independent organization established in 2002 by Ed Mazria[3], founder and CEO, in response to the climate change crisis. Its mission is to rapidly transform the built environment from the major contributor of greenhouse gas emissions to a central part of the solution to the climate and energy crisis. The organization pursues two primary objectives: the dramatic reduction in global fossil fuel consumption and GHG emissions of the built environment by changing the way cities, communities, infrastructure, and buildings are planned, designed and constructed; and the regional development of an adaptive, resilient built environment that can manage the impacts of climate change, preserve natural resources and access low-cost, renewable energy resources.

“Architecture and planning professionals have a responsibility to act in a way that helps to secure a sustainable future, but there’s also a business case to be made for adopting this approach,” notes Mazria. “Building codes will continue to require greater energy efficiency, and clients are rightly asking for more sustainable and resilient developments and buildings. If you are not designing to high-performance, resilient and low-carbon standards today, you will be at a great disadvantage in the near future.”

 

2015 Status

According to Mazria, a recent DesignIntelligence survey says the 2030 Challenge has been adopted and is being implemented by 70 percent of the top 20 architecture/engineering/planning firms in the U.S., and 54 percent of all U.S. firms. Additionally, the American Institute of Architects[4] (AIA), U.S. Conference of Mayors[5], the federal government and a variety of other organizations, agencies, and state and local governments have adopted the challenge.

“The landscape for low-carbon buildings has been transformed since we issued the 2030 Challenge in 2006, and building with sustainability and high performance in mind has become the standard approach,” says Mazria. “Zero Net Energy (ZNE) and near-ZNE buildings have gone from one or two prototypes and experiments to hundreds being built today, and in the case of California, being the standard that will be adopted for new residential buildings in 2020 and commercial buildings in 2030.”

 

Getting to 2030

Education is critical as an information gap currently exists in planning and designing for a carbon neutral world, says Mazria. To help provide architects and planners the information they need, Architecture 2030 partnered with AIA chapters to produce the AIA+2030 Professional Education series[6], which covers the techniques, strategies, applications and design approaches to create high-performance, low-carbon buildings. The series is offered in 27 markets across the U.S. and Canada.

Additionally, the 2030 Palette[7] is a free online platform that delivers best practices for sustainable, low-carbon, zero-carbon and resilient planning and design across the entire built environment spectrum, from regional and city planning to individual buildings and building elements. It is the primary source of tools, design approaches and actions that ensure buildings and communities consume fewer fossil fuels, complement sensitive ecosystems and can adapt to a changing climate.

For a new building, development or major renovation, getting to carbon neutral is a two-step process, says Mazria. The first step is design-implementing sustainable and passive design strategies that are low cost or no cost-which can get designers 70 to 80 percent of the way there. For example, Mazria says approaches such as how you orient the building, shade the glass, incorporate daylighting, and passive heating and cooling strategies, along with the façade and roof colors, materials and systems specified, all dramatically reduce the energy a building requires.

The second step involves providing fossil fuel-free energy, ideally from on-site renewables, or from accessing district or utility-scale renewable energy produced off-site.

Tracking Our Progress

In 2009, AIA introduced its 2030 Commitment[8], a voluntary initiative for AIA member firms and other entities in the built environment that asks organizations to make a pledge, develop multiyear action plans and implement steps that can advance AIA’s goal of carbon neutral buildings by 2030. Each year, firms involved in the commitment are asked to submit an assessment of their previous year’s design work for an annual update. The 2014 update will be released later this year.

While architecture firms are really good at designing
‘super green’ projects, Greg Mella, FAIA, LEED AP BD+C, vice president, SmithGroupJJR[9], Washington, D.C., and a member of the 2030 Commitment working group, says they only represent maybe 15 or 20 percent of a firm’s overall portfolio. “Global warming isn’t being created by 15 percent of our portfolio, it’s being created by everything we do, and that includes the other 85 percent of our projects,” he adds.

2030 Challenge for Products In addition to the 2030 Challenge for buildings, Architecture 2030 has issued a 2030 Challenge for Products, which calls for products for new buildings, developments, and renovations to be specified to meet a maximum carbon-equivalent footprint of 30 percent below the product category average. The embodied carbon-equivalent footprint reduction shall be increased to: 35 percent or better in 2015 40 percent or better in 2020 45 percent or better in 2025 50 percent or better in 2030 “Throughout a building’s life span, its total energy consumption includes the energy required to operate the building (heating, lighting, cooling, etc.), and the energy it takes to construct the building and produce building materials (concrete, steel, glass, carpet, paint, fixtures, equipment, etc.),” explains Ed Mazria, founder and CEO of Architecture 2030. “This second element is its embodied energy and carbon.” Mazria says that while inroads are being made to reduce the energy consumption in building operations by improving its efficiency and design, we cannot get to zero emissions by 2050 without addressing the embodied energy and carbon building products. “The goal of the 2030 Challenge for Products is to rapidly reduce the fossil fuel energy consumption and GHG emissions of producing building materials,” he says. The Challenge has been adopted by major trade organizations and manufacturers including Interface, LaGrange, Ga.; Armstrong World Industries Inc., Lancaster, Pa.; and the National Ready Mixed Concrete Association.

SmithGroupJJR has been reporting for five years and Mella says they are probably doing around the same as other firms who have signed the commitment. “These are firms that are the most passionate and vocal about achieving the 2030 energy targets,” he says, “and they’re kind of hovering around the 40 percent better than average range.” The target for 2015 is a 70 percent improvement over average, and while Mella says they’re not where they need to be yet, they’re starting to get to the tipping point where the hurdles are related to getting everyone involved in achieving these goals, regardless of whether or not a particular project is aiming for net zero.

Lord Aeck Sargent has been reporting their results for the last four years. Jim Nicolow, AIA, principal, LEED Fellow, director at Lord Aeck Sargent[10], Ann Arbor, Mich., says the AIA’s 2030 Commitment has helped translate the 2030 Challenge into meaningful reporting activities for every project they work on.

“This commitment has fundamentally impacted the way Perkins+Will approaches the design process and tracks performance across a quantifiable set of energy metrics including overall
[energy use intensity (EUI)] reduction in addition to Lighting Power Density Reduction for interior projects,” says Breeze Glazer, LEED AP BD+C, senior associate, sustainable design leader and research knowledge manager at Perkins+Will[11], New York City.

Each year, Glazer says every project in design-nearly 300 total across 24 offices-are assessed as part of a broader “Sustainable Reporting Process,” which also looks at performance around water reduction and healthy materials. Perkins+Will has made considerable progress since the inception of the commitment, Glazer notes, adding that this past year 70 percent of the gross square footage designed by the firm met the 2014 challenge of a 60 percent reduction and over half of North American offices had at least one 2030 Challenge-compliant project.

So far, Nicolow says the firm has had a mix of projects that are exceeding the requirements to those with minimum code compliance. “The biggest issue is getting the same level of knowledge and commitment across the whole firm,” he says. “I think we get a little better at it each year.”

 

Making the 2030 Challenge a Priority

To be successful in reaching the goals of the 2030 Challenge, it is important that each firm and project team makes it a priority on projects. While there are often competing requirements and tight schedules on projects, as Nicolow says, “Where we fail is when it’s not talked about and not brought up as a priority.”

The projects that are the most successful are those where the client has made sustainability or high performance a key driver, Nicolow explains. “As responsible architects, you do what the client asks you to do,” he says. “The bigger challenge is where it’s not really on the radar. There’s a full gamut of projects ranging from where sustainability is a key driver to where it’s not even really discussed. And figuring out how to make it part of our process where we at least give the client the information to make an informed decision about performance and sustainability even when it’s not a key driver is what I see our role as being. Not necessarily getting them to do something they don’t want to, but giving them the information to make informed decisions, so it’s at least part of the conversation and they’re choosing from a point of informed decision making.”

One change Lord Aeck Sargent has made is having 2030 Champions from each office and practice area responsible for gathering the information for that sector. “As the firm has grown, we had initially sort of centralized that responsibility with a building performance analyst or sustainability person like myself leading the effort firm wide,” Nicolow explains. “What we’ve found is that it really needs to move down to the project teams and into the practice areas. I think the biggest lesson learned is that the more we can distribute it and make it a priority coming from the ground up and the team, the more effective it is.”

Glazer adds that Perkins+Will has realized the benefit of focusing on meeting the challenge in particular with larger projects they typically have larger fees, more potential for energy modeling and operational cost savings for the client. “The next 15 years will see rapid acceleration in projects meeting the challenge and substantially reducing the carbon footprint of the built environment due to increased expertise of teams, reduction in first cost for sustainable technologies and a growing recognition within the general public of the realities of climate change,” he says.

“I think the 2030 Commitment is a really important tool to get firms to be where they need to be,” says Mella. The key is to raise the bar across a firm’s entire portfolio. “You’re creating these super-green projects that pull up the rest of the group, but you cannot lose sight of the impact of an entire practice at the same time,” he adds. “So it’s been very interesting.”

 

2030 Districts Across North America, 2030 Districts have formed to meet the energy, water and vehicle emissions reduction targets for existing buildings and new construction call for by Architecture 2030 in the 2030 Challenge for Planning. First established in Seattle, the 2030 Districts are a national grassroots effort to create long-term partnerships, coalitions and collaborations around achievable and measureable goals for renovating hundreds of millions of square feet of existing urban and suburban areas and infrastructure, as well as for infill development and redevelopment. They are unique private/public partnerships that bring property owners and managers together with local governments, business and community stakeholders to provide a business model for urban sustainability through collaboration, leveraged financing, and shared resources. Together they benchmark, develop and implement creative strategies, best practices and verification methods for measuring progress towards a common goal. In addition to Pittsburgh, there are established 2030 Districts in Seattle; Cleveland; Los Angeles; Denver; Stamford, Conn.; San Francisco; Toronto; and Dallas. There are also emerging districts in Albuquerque, N.M.; Ann Arbor, Mich.; Detroit; San Antonio; Ithaca, N.Y.; and Portland, Ore.

2030 and Beyond

The 2030 Challenge addresses new construction and major renovations, and Mazria notes that getting to 2030 with all new construction reaching carbon neutrality would be a great and necessary achievement. However, there is still a lot that needs to be done with the current building stock, which is not carbon neutral.

Scientists have made it clear, Mazria says, that to have a high probability of keeping the global average temperature increase below 2 degrees Celsius, all fossil fuel-generated GHG emissions need to be phased out by 2050-not just the emissions from new buildings.

“We’re working with many U.S. and international groups to prepare for the major UN climate talks that will take place in Paris later this year,” Mazria explains. “Our Roadmap to Zero Emissions[12] plan illustrates how we can globally meet a range of emissions reductions targets for the built environment that eliminates fossil fuel GHG emissions by 2050, and how we can fund it.”

Mazria says they’ve also recently published The Urban Climate Initiative-a set of incremental building sector actions that governments can put in place to ensure 80 x 50 or greater emissions reductions (80 percent CO2 emissions reduction in the built environment by the year 2050). “The Initiative addresses existing buildings through actions at key building cycle intervention points, building energy conservation codes and incentives for renewable energy generation,” he adds. “The Initiative helped form the basis for New York City’s 80 x 50 emissions reduction announcement during Climate Week last September.”

 

Photo credits from top: (Gateway Community College) Photo by Woodruff Brown, courtesy of Perkins+Will; (Mark Jefferson Science Complex at Eastern Michigan University) Photo: Curt Clayton Photography; (Perkins+Will’s Atlanta offices) Photo by Eduard Hueber, courtesy of Perkins+Will

Source URL: https://www.metalarchitecture.com/articles/2030-challenge-update/

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