The Design Firm Making Net-Zero Emissions Buildings a Reality

This year, the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Interior Business Center moved into a new office space in Denver. Building 48 is part of a sprawling complex of government service buildings, the largest concentration of federal agencies outside of Washington D.C. The building has been repurposed several times; it was previously a World War II munitions plant and most recently an aging National Archives and Records Administration warehouse. The transition will not just change the office location, it is also an important upgrade: the building operates as a net-zero energy facility and both the structure itself and the area around it will have some of the industry’s highest sustainability certifications.

For now, these kinds of net-zero energy buildings are the exception rather than the norm. But the design firm behind Building 48 is hoping to change that. “Architects have a big impact on the planet,” says CannonDesign’s sustainability director, Eric Corey Freed. “Can we build in such a way that the more buildings we build, the better off we are, as opposed to what we have now, which is almost the exact opposite?” 

Globally, the building sector is responsible for almost 40% of energy consumption and energy-related emissions, 50% of resource consumption, and is expected to double its total footprint by 2060 as demand increases. Designing and constructing buildings to be net zero and use fewer resources is one of the key challenges to decarbonizing our economy. 

The industry has started to make some progress in that area. For example the Net Zero Carbon Buildings Commitment, signed by over 165 companies globally, sets a 2030 deadline for existing buildings to reduce their energy consumption and eliminate emissions from energy and refrigerants. It also requires that new developments and major renovations ensure buildings become highly efficient, powered by renewables, and maximize overall carbon emission reductions. CannonDesign signed this commitment in 2022, and has internally committed to achieving net-zero operational carbon for all its own assets by 2030.

One of the ways CannonDesign is getting there includes looking not just at energy use but the embodied carbon of a building. Unlike operational carbon, which refers to emissions released when a building is used, embodied carbon refers to the carbon dioxide emitted during the extraction, manufacturing, transportation, construction, and disposal of building materials. Materials like concrete, steel, and insulation contribute to embodied carbon emissions, which together make up 11% of global greenhouse gas emissions. By using alternative, low-carbon materials, these emissions can be reduced. For example, Caltech’s new Resnick Sustainability Center, designed by CannonDesign, uses a mass-timber grid shell for its atrium, reducing embodied carbon by 15-17% compared to the steel-concrete alternative. 

But Freed says that the greatest benefits the company sees are by repurposing and retrofitting old buildings.

“If you can transform an existing building into what you need it to be today, it’s far more sustainable than building a new one,” he says. Often, people will get excited about new buildings, but they come at a steep cost, including for the environment. For example, reusing the existing building for the Department of the Interior Business Center saved the equivalent carbon needed to drive an average car 43 million miles or power 3,300 homes for a single year. Overall, the American Institute for Architects estimates that repurposing an existing building rather than building a new one can save 50–75% in embodied carbon.

CannonDesign also incorporates future climate risks into their designs. For example in Miami, the Irma and Norman Cancer Center has been designed to withstand more than 185 mph winds and 20-ft. storm surges.

But climate impacts are only one part of what makes a building sustainable, says Freed. Over the last several years, CannonDesign has elaborated a new ethos that influences how it approaches sustainability in buildings. Instead of focusing on individual metrics, it uses a living-centered design approach that looks at the impact of a building on every scale, from the intimate human experiences created, to how it is affecting the community, all the way to the impact it is having on the environment and climate. One of their recent designs, the Cordilleras Mental Health Campus outside of San Francisco, exemplifies this. The first net-zero energy mental health facility in California and the largest in the nation, it will use solar panels on roofs and parking lots to generate energy. But it was also designed to facilitate patient recovery and rehabilitation, tapping into the broad literature that shows how sustainable and biophilic design can help people recover faster, and boost mental health and collaboration.

“Sustainability is not just something that reduces operation cost, but also enhances people’s experience of the building,” says Freed. “I’m not selling clients on sustainability. I’m really selling them on the outcomes and benefits that sustainability provides.”