Designing for sustainability
How ZGF Architects is leading innovation in sustainability for the built environment
Building better buildings
The story of our modern world is a story of our buildings. We live in buildings, we work in buildings, and we come together as a community, in buildings. Buildings can connect us with our past. Buildings have the potential to inspire us to build a better future. Buildings have also, unfortunately, been a leading source of greenhouse gas emissions.
NREL reported commercial buildings were responsible for 16% of all U.S. carbon dioxide emissions. According to a 2023 UN Environment Programme report, the buildings and construction sector accounts for a staggering 37% of global emissions, by far the largest emitter of greenhouse gases. And the built environment is projected to double in footprint by 2060
Despite these sobering statistics, there’s reason for hope. Significant innovations have allowed buildings to become incredibly efficient in their operational use-phase. Through investments in energy efficiency retrofits, onsite renewable energy generation & storage, and electrification, buildings are more efficient than ever. And in recent years, more attention has been given to addressing the embodied carbon of building construction – the emissions associated with the materials going into buildings, and the construction itself. New innovations in clean steel, cement and other building materials, along with lower-emission construction equipment, have all meaningfully reduced how much embodied carbon goes into the construction of buildings.
While these innovations continue, there are two areas of sustainability in the built environment that still represent significant opportunity to further the goal of achieving absolute zero-emissions buildings. These include 1) designing sustainability from the ground-up as a core guiding design principle for every building, and 2) putting a real price on today’s non-reduceable emissions, via carbon offsetting, to incentivize further reduction, faster.
Pioneering architecture firm ZGF has committed to taking on both, head on.
Decarbonizing the design and construction of the built environment is an essential step towards mitigating the impacts of climate change.
Meet ZFG, a climate pioneer
ZGF is a commercial architecture firm founded in 1942 with over 650 employees working across seven North American offices. Long before LEED became the industry standard, the firm incorporated sustainability into each project and continues today to lead the industry in innovative sustainability design. Clients trust ZGF to advise them on credibly reaching their holistic sustainability goals, and they have committed themselves to an internal 55% reduction of emissions by 2030.
Our clients often have holistic sustainability goals and trust us to advise with authenticity and credibility. Walking the talk by decarbonizing our operations is a crucial piece of this, and there is a feedback loop that deepens our expertise.
Developing a holistic emissions reduction strategy
ZGF supports their clients in reducing the emissions footprint of the buildings they design. Additionally, they’ve committed as an organization to actively address their own emissions — measuring and monitoring their own footprint, and planning actions such as purchasing renewable energy, reducing waste and diverting from landfills, sub-metering office utilities, and prioritizing lower emission travel.
In parallel to their focused emissions reductions, ZGF recognized that there would be some residual emissions for which there is no technology or other solution yet available today to completely eliminate. Instead of waiting until zero-emissions solutions for these residual emissions were available, however, they decided to address their remaining emissions head-on, with high-integrity carbon offsets.
Purchasing carbon offset credits assigns a monetary value to our carbon emissions, and helps us attribute more value to carbon reduction strategies. Purchasing carbon offsets also allows us to invest in projects and technologies that may further reduce our emissions beyond what we can achieve with operational efficiency alone.
ZGF saw this financial commitment to carbon credit purchases as a mechanism to both: 1) fund immediately impactful, high-leverage climate work that wouldn’t be funded otherwise, and 2) put a price on their remaining emissions, that will better value reductions going forward, helping to accelerate their already ambitious decarbonization efforts.
Developing a carbon offset strategy
ZGF is a commercial architecture firm founded in 1942 with over 650 employees working across seven North American offices. Long before LEED became the industry standard, the firm incorporated sustainability into each project and continues today to lead the industry in innovative sustainability design. Clients trust ZGF to advise them on credibly reaching their holistic sustainability goals, and they have committed themselves to an internal 55% reduction of emissions by 2030.
Calculating our carbon footprint and establishing a budget to offset emissions allowed us to approach carbon offset vendors with target prices and volumes. Then we developed several options for our leaders to choose from. All of our options met baseline criteria pertaining to integrity, and they varied in terms of cost, project type, and co-benefits.
To confidently begin purchasing carbon credits, ZGF looked to the Oxford Offsetting Principles to help them plan a portfolio of projects, and then evaluated project developers based on key criteria such as permanence, additionality, and verifiability. ZGF then engaged directly with climate project developers that met these criteria, including Tradewater, to further evaluate the projects they were going to invest in and then made their credit purchases.
ZGF partners with Tradewater
They selected Tradewater as a partner to complement their planned purchase of nature-based carbon removal credits, acknowledging the high-leverage nature of Tradewater’s work to both immediately and permanently prevent the emission of super polluting non-CO2 gases, which are many times more potent than CO2 and cannot be sequestered once released into the atmosphere.
Tradewater’s credits are highly rated and have many co-benefits for companies operating in the US and / or in industries that use refrigerants. Tradewater is easy to work with, provide straightforward pricing, and complement other nature-based credits within our portfolio.
Connect with us
Are you developing your organization’s holistic emissions reduction strategy, and considering high-integrity carbon credits as a part of that strategy? As a mission-driven B-Corp fully focused on having the biggest impact possible in the global effort to address climate change, Tradewater supports organizations like yours to build effective climate action plans.
If we can help with developing your holistic strategy, or with opportunities for your organization to fund immediate impactful climate projects via highly-rated carbon offset credits, let’s connect!
