Carbon-neutral Architecture—A Progress Report
Magnusson Architecture and Planning (MAP) operates at the nexus of affordability and sustainability. For over three decades we’ve worked with nonprofit organizations, municipalities, and for-profit developers to design housing and neighborhood revitalization projects with a focus on affordable, supportive, senior, and workforce housing. The affordable- housing industry has, in many respects, led the way on sustainable residential development in the New York area for years, and now on Passive House adoption, too. This is due in large part to local and state funding agencies that have adopted sustainability standards as a requirement for public subsidies. Operational costs are key, too; as affordable developers are more likely to own properties for an extended period of time, they often consider investing a little bit more in strategies to make them more durable and efficient. We at MAP are very aligned with these efforts.
While we are always addressing a host of factors in our work—unique building typologies, new regulatory requirements, cost considerations for publicly subsidized developments—making progress toward a carbon-neutral architecture has consistently been a high priority for our firm. To gain insights into exactly how we are doing, we recently charted our new construction projects over the past ten years. During that time we have dealt with a wide variety of potential certifications and standards, including LEED, PHI, PHIUS, Enterprise Green Communities, Energy Star, and NYSERDA. This mix of standards complicates the comparison process. In order to provide a comparable metric of our projects’ operational energy performance, we decided to focus on energy use intensity (EUI) and corresponding conversions to kgCO2/sf (see Figure 1).