Leading Real Estate Developers Prioritizing Embodied Carbon Reduction?

Construction
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Hi Team,

Wondering if anyone has some examples of large real estate developers, owners, investors that are prioritizing embodied carbon reductions?

Ryan

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I’ll nominate Frasers - they are in Australia though.

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Two examples of big real estate players in the UK looking into their upstream/embodied emissions:
Landsec: https://landsec.com/sustainability/efficient-use-natural-resources/climate-change-carbon
Grosvenor: https://www.grosvenor.com/our-businesses/grosvenor-britain-ireland/sustainability-at-grosvenor-britain-ireland

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Check out NYCity’s Durst Organization, which has funded research and implemented programs to take back ceiling and carpet tiles during demolition. They helped start Amanda Kaminsky’s organization: https://www.buildingproductecosystems.org/

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Hi Ryan,
We develop affordable housing in San Francisco and are prioritizing embodied carbon reductions in a few ways:

  • implementing low carbon concrete specs
  • piloting a whole-building LCA on a multifamily project.
  • other efforts are on improving materials choices but it’s a gradual process.
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Google has ambitious and clear embodied carbon reduction targets for all new construction. It is a bit complex but basically 20% reduction over the 50% SD baseline, so for example if you are going with mass timber over steel or concrete, that savings is already baked in. So it requires drilling down far deeper.

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Hi Ryan,

We’ve been contacted by Philipp Brenninkmeijer who is working on real estate related reductions in the built environment and you may want to reach out to him to discuss:

philipp.b@anthos.net

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Hi Ryan,
Amazon appears to be the most noticeable with their commitment to electric delivery vehicles ,Net Zero time line and investment in renewable energy sources.
I think that developers that build basic shells to lease- that are not conditioned-like Distribution Centers -will be slow to adopt that thinking

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Hey Ryan, our development team for Prologis in the UK (and now in Europe) is doing full cradle to grave LCAs to measure embodied carbon and anticipated operation emissions to maximize carbon reductions and then support carbon mitigation efforts with rain forest protection donations through the international charity Cool Earth.

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Lendlease Europe and USA have released their roadmap to Absolute Zero here: https://www.lendlease.com/better-places/roadmap-to-absolute-zero-carbon/-/media/fa3122e752024a22b1e61bc08bf8972a.ashx

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Hines is doing a lot of work on embodied carbon reductions. It’s not just their T3 buildings, but many of their development projects are intentionally considering how to reduce EC. When an SVP (not the sustainability lead!) is talking about EPDs, you know they’re getting serious.

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