At Buro Happold, we are making changes in the way we design, operate and retrofit buildings to achieve net zero carbon. This includes switching to electricity as our only form of energy on projects and embedding strategies to significantly reduce energy demand and increase renewable generation on-site. Alongside this initiative, Buro Happold advocates principles such as Soft Landings, Design for Performance and Post Occupancy Evaluation across all our projects.
We ensure that the learning from our global portfolio of work feeds into all elements of the business. Examples include: The House at Cornell Tech (the world’s largest Passivhaus), our intensive commissioning work at the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the learning from deep retrofits such as UCL 22 Gordon Street – winner of the 2020 CIBSE Building Performance “Retrofit of the Year” – and the “Living Building Challenge” certified Hitchcock Center for the Environment, achieving net zero energy and net zero water on-site, verified through measured performance data.
By the end of the April 2021 financial year, in line with the commitments in our Global Sustainability Report, Buro Happold will ensure that business operations will be net zero carbon. We are also developing an in-house building performance dashboard to capture measured energy data on projects and track the progress of our commitment to achieve net zero carbon on all our new-build projects by 2030 and all projects by 2050.
Joining the Building Performance Network is an important step in embedding learning amongst our employees and is an opportunity to have a greater platform for changing top-down policies.
Please get in touch with our Building Performance specialist team if you would like to know more.