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ustainability has been a focal point for the construction industry nationwide for approximately the last decade, with Hawai‘i one of the leaders in groundbreaking industry initiatives.
The 2024 PBX Hawai‘i convention held a forum detailing the goals of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) 2030 Commitment from the perspective of various architectural firms, ranging from those which recently signed the Commitment to firms that are now a few years into implementing Commitment initiatives.
The PBX panel featured Melanie Islam, Mason Architects Inc. principal and sustainability director; Matt Loudermilk, AHL designer; Jay Moorman, KYA Inc. lead sustainability coordinator; and Scott Schwarzwalder, G70 project architect. Jill Edelman, founder of DRaGonfly Regenerative Architecture & Design, served as moderator.
WHAT IS THE 2030 COMMITMENT?
The AIA 2030 Commitment gives architectural firms measurable decarbonization targets and tracking tools to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030. Many firms have started implementing sustainability sectors within their businesses but lacked support from external organizations to incentivize industry partners to reduce carbon emissions within their own practices.
So the guidance from [KYA Inc.] was, ‘Let’s analyze this commitment.’ Maybe this commitment will tell our firm how important it is, and by signing onto the Commitment, we’ll also make it into a routine process with … steps,” says Moorman. “… I think ‘accountability’ is the kind of word that was most important because we’re tracking our design process and tracking the results with metrics that we can calculate, feel and touch.”
Firms who are years into the adoption of the Commitment have moved onto the next steps of refining guidelines from sustainability action plan (SAP)-based projects.
“I think in the very beginning, we recognized how big of a task [guideline development] was for any firm, … and you’re always operating on the fly until you realize that you’re developing documents that we refer to a lot,” says Loudermilk. “So early in the process of developing the documents, we baked in the system of revisions and let it evolve; also, the kinds of spin-offs [that are] going to happen because of that.”
So far, architects have identified 10 main frameworks for design excellence for the 2030 Commitment — designing for integration, equitable communities, ecology, well-being, resources, water, economy, energy, change and discovery.
ESTABLISHING ROOTS
Because the year 2030 is a mere five years away, local firms are now rushing to restructure teams and approaches to accommodate the acceleration of carbon-neutrality.
“So we had an intensive training period for the entire firm where we had a topic every month. We give a snapshot of what you know, what the concepts were, how it applied to the 2030 Commitment at large and for each member in the hierarchy,” Moorman says. “We thought that the best way to draft a sustainability action plan was for the audience to be the firm, rather than perhaps our clients or our industry.”
With AI also being quickly adopted, architectural sustainability sectors are using it to their advantage. According to G70 Associate Principal Chretien Macutay, G70 has used various AI tools for the early planning phases of 2030 Commitment initiatives.
“These tools allow us to consider macro- and microclimate conditions, building envelope efficiency, CO2 impacts, renewable energy potential and predictive energy-use intensity,” says Macutay. “For instance, in recent projects, we have used programs like cove.tool and Autodesk Forma at early stages to set baseline energy use intensity and assist with climate analyses.”
WHAT’S NEXT
As local firms work on establishing workflows and designated teams, they’re now looking to find the best way to approach clients using SAP-based project data.
“I feel like … projects that aren’t pursuing certification, that don’t have an energy model that a client is pushing, a sustainability consultant that a client is really driven towards or funding — how do we as architects push for that deeper information or deeper dive into the energy usage of our buildings?” Schwarzwalder emphasizes. “Otherwise, we’re just hitting the code-compliant, hopefully the metric of whatever 45 percent reduction in energy intensity. But if we don’t track that information … we really don’t know how our projects … performed.”
“We’re always having sustainability clients [say], ‘How do I become a client there? How do I make so-and-so clear?’ Because maybe the energy model isn’t there because it’s not a part of that project,” says Loudermilk. “And I just come back to the idea that this is just another tool for … how it makes it tangible to your firm leadership about the benefits there, and it’s … a way to represent the real value to the client.”
Contractors can expect that for the next five years and beyond, participating architecture firms will more heavily implement carbon-neutrality into project proposals now that they’ll have acquired SAP-based data.
But at the end of the day, most architects are simply looking to popularize the Commitment’s goals, hopefully leading to a new standard of building practices.
“We want to make a bigger band,” says Islam. “So the goal is to get more of you guys to sign on, then we can have … all these closers.”
