I have long admired the transparency that many of my peers are sharing 2030 reporting results, by Michelle Amt, Director of Sustainability and Inclusion at VMDO, with their firm’s radical transparency. This blog continues that spirit, diving into LMN Architects’ data process and firm culture. LMN is a large firm based in Seattle and has been a 2030 Commitment signatory since 2010, reporting a 25% reduction that first year. This year we finally surpassed the Architecture 2030 Challenge threshold of 80% pEUI reduction for the first time, with an 85% weighted average reduction. While this an important milestone for LMN, we still have a long way to go. Climate action is not about one firm, we can only be effective through collaboration, honesty and transparency to drive our industry forward.
So how did we reach 85%? I have some ideas. We have internally required for nearly a Early energy modeling allows big decisions on massing, glazing, and orientation to be informed by energy and carbon. Over time, these early energy modeling conversations have helped our teams understand and reduce energy use on our projects, they have increased energy literacy at LMN, and they have advanced our culture, so we start out using the passive and active design strategies that we have found effective. One of the most important is that nearly all projects now begin with 30-40% glazing plus interesting opaque wall strategies, giving project teams the flexibility to adjust opaque and glazing as design progresses. We also work with great engineers that can provide data on the value of all-electric, low carbon solutions, especially heat pump systems.
We have many clients who align with our carbon goals – we believe this is a result of the market in general taking up climate action, our past built work that helped our clients set and then exceed their sustainability goals, our culture that includes
As we have moved ever closer to 2030 and our carbon neutral goals, we realized that our goals needed to switch from just energy-related to a comprehensive view of all sources of greenhouses gases, including embodied carbon. In response, The Path to Zero Carbon series was started in 2022 to chart a course for truly carbon buildings. The series is a free, online resource for the building industry and includes many of our peers in interviews and reviews. Several other firms are using this as a book club and internal education tool as our industry transitions to carbon literacy.
Switching gears a bit to talk about the data itself, the 2030 Challenge is a bit misunderstood. Most people think it’s an energy use reduction, but the goal has always been a “fossil fuel energy use reduction.” This means an all-electric building with on-site renewable energy or the right quality off-site power purchase of 100% renewable energy is credited with a 100% fossil fuel energy use reduction per the AIA 2030 Commitment. Since power purchases of 100% renewable energy are becoming more common – often driven by the private sector through Power Purchase Agreements
Overall LMN’s raw energy use reduction (pEUI) was 62% - based on passive and active ncreased this to the 85% total reduction reported per the guidelines. The reporting also includes one very large net zero project; without that project our reporting would have been 76%.
Our official AIA 2030 report also includes energy modeling in 93% of our project area (we don’t count architect-based energy modeling in our reporting). be modeled, we didn't report cursory early embodied carbon analysis efforts (such as EPIC or CARE), and some of our large projects have not yet posted their initial results as of March. We can do much better in this area. Tally, our preferred software, was not easy to use for Concept or Schematic-level modeling except for bay-sized “shoebox” models, but we are testing software now so we can get earlier whole-building studies to inform our early designs.
There is still a lot of work to do as we head into our final 6 years of the 2030 Challenge. Feel free to reach out if you want to know more about our work or the Path to Zero Carbon series.
Principal, Director of Sustainable Design
kanderson@lmnarchitects.com.