On the path toward carbon neutrality: Sol’s 2030 Commitment Report

Sol design + consulting has completed its fourth year of reporting for the AIA 2030 Commitment. This involves submitting the energy performance of each of our architectural design projects, with the goal of achieving the energy reductions of the 2030 Challenge – which currently stand at an 80% reduction from a baseline Energy Use Intensity (EUI).

In the spirit of radical transparency, we are publishing our results and lessons learned so that as an industry we can improve more quickly.

Sol only submits projects for which we have done architectural design work. To date, 69% of our portfolio has met the 2030 Challenge targets (including both completed projects and those in design); and our average predicted EUI reduction is 68% (compared to the target of 80%). This is better than the average reported reduction, but short of the targets.

As a company focused on sustainability, we have the advantage of working on projects with high sustainability ambitions. That gives us a leg up on the 2030 Challenge: our architectural clients generally prioritize sustainability. Many are aiming for Passive House, Net Zero Energy, or higher levels of LEED Certification.

In reviewing our data for submission, here are a handful of observations and lessons learned:

1. Passive House projects meet the challenge. All of the projects that are pursuing Passive House certification more than met 2030 Challenge targets. This is not surprising, as Passive House is a performance-based certification that requires excellent energy performance, and many of these projects also include a solar array because the owners are hoping to achieve Net Zero Energy (and solar is required to meet an 80% reduction; see more on this below).
2. Retrofits can meet the target. Six of our design projects are retrofits, and four of these met the 2030 targets. This included the Moothart Deep Energy Retrofit, which wrapped an existing home in insulation, and two other similar retrofit projects. Our prior work shows that even projects with historic requirements can achieve deep energy reductions – for example, the LEED Platinum Myers-Heckman Residence.
3. Renewable energy is required. Passive House and Deep Energy Retrofits can yield big energy reductions, but to get to an 80% reduction, renewable energy is required. Without renewables, none of our projects would have met the targets – not even the Passive House projects. However, solar is not appropriate or practical on every project – and moreover, risks obscuring the focus on energy efficiency, which must continue to be a priority for reasons of embodied carbon, grid interactivity, passive resiliency, and designing for sufficiency. Therefore:
4. Gross pEUI is more important than Net pEUI. Gross excludes solar; Net includes it. We have found it more useful to track Gross pEUI against 2030 targets to make sure that we’re focusing on efficiency first. Solar can often be added to a project later, but a building’s form and fabric are going to be fixed for many decades.
5. Actually, total carbon is more important than pEUI. As others have written, as an industry we should be using carbon as a metric – total carbon, including embodied and operational. At Sol, we have begun to evaluate embodied carbon on our design projects; however, our data to date is both piecemeal and inconsistent: Different Life Cycle Assessment / Embodied Carbon tools have different scopes, making the data difficult to compare from project to project. Going forward, we are looking to standardize the way we measure and report carbon (both operational and embodied) so we can use carbon as the measure rather than operational energy use alone.

What are the challenges? What’s keeping all of our projects from achieving the 2030 targets? Primarily two things:

• Budget realities. In the end, projects still have finite budgets, and compromises are made to get the project built. Although we work to design energy efficiency into the DNA of each design, strategies like high insulation and more efficient equipment do come with higher capital costs and are not always workable.
• Inability to add on-site solar. Sometimes this is due to budget, but it can also be due to site-specific circumstances like shading. We have had projects both in heavily shaded and urban areas where solar was just not practical.

What are the successes & opportunities?

• Keeping performance top of mind. We integrate energy modeling early across all of our projects, and nearly all of our client-facing presentations include energy- and/or carbon metrics. This helps to keep performance in the conversation, avoiding decisions that are made only on the basis of cost, aesthetics, or program.
• Early partnership with contractors. In our design work, which primarily focuses on residential and small commercial projects, finding contractors and builders who are on-board with energy and carbon reductions is critical. So is bringing them into the process early, so cost discussions and optimizations can happen during design – reducing the chances that sustainability measures get value engineered out.

We will continue to work toward achieving 100% achievement of 2030 Challenge targets across our design portfolio. With the built environment responsible for approximately 40% of global carbon emissions, these targets are an essential part of the fight to mitigate climate change.