Next steps achieved for our London studio’s journey to Carbon Neutral

We are thrilled to have completed our assessment for our carbon footprint, achieving an offset figure that is lower than expected, Farah El-Hakim explains our journey.

When we relocated our London studio to Eccleston Yards in 2018, we completely upgraded and retrofitted the space to our own design and specification. A key part of the process was embedding sustainability. Our strategy was to focus first on the reduction of our energy demand as the main way to minimise our operational carbon emissions. As a second step, this year, we pushed our efforts further and measured our complete operational carbon footprint with the goal to address the residual emissions and become a Carbon Neutral Organisation.

We are proud that our new office recently won a BCO Award, the sustainable aspects of the refit that helped win the award include the significant energy efficiency upgrade of the external envelope (walls and windows), installation of energy efficient MEP (MVHRs), energy efficient LED lighting, high efficiency water heaters and upgraded IT and cabling network (to allow for flexible working). This resulted in an EPC rating of B, well above the requirement for a D rating.

Our studio achieved an EPC rating of B, well above the requirement for a D rating

As we often advise our clients on sustainability issues, it felt like a natural choice to go further for carbon neutral status, and one that is in line with our ethos and culture. If we consider that a primary purpose of buildings is performance, to modify external climate to produce a comfortable interior. With our office there are many aspects that have been optimized. These include an efficient thermal performance from the building envelope, a comfortable indoor environment with appropriate ventilation with heat recovery and generous daylight.

“We know the importance of upgrading our existing buildings – ensuring their continued use – as an alternative to demolition and new build. We feel fortunate that, with the office move, we have been able to shape our own working environment with sustainability and efficiency at the heart of our design decisions; knowing that these issues are important to everyone who works here and that we're doing our bit to operate responsibly and protect our environment.”
Alec Howard, Partner

To measure our endeavors, we collaborated with Carbon Footprint, an assessor and environmental consultancy. Our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions were assessed from 1st April 2020 to 31st March 2021. The carbon footprint figure represents the impact our activities have on the environment in terms of greenhouse gases produced, in units of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e). This is made up of both direct emissions (such as electricity – KwH of energy used – and employee business travel) and indirect emissions (our upstream and downstream activities). To expand further, our indirect data collection also included: mobility (cars, taxis, airplanes, public transport), home-workers vs office workers, waste produced, paper recycled, printing and ICT equipment. This all resulted in a carbon footprint of 29.55 total tons CO2e.

We are now a Carbon Assessed Organisation, our next step is to offset and become a Carbon Neutral Organisation

With site electricity being the biggest contributor to our emissions, this was still a lower figure than expected. This is most likely due to a combination of the high efficiency of the thermal envelope, increase in paperless working, and reflective of the overall shift in how we work due to the pandemic. Of course the exponential decarbonisation of the electricity grid also helped a lot. And, whilst air travel was at zero over the last year and a half, pre-pandemic there would have been trips to our offices in Hong Kong and more frequently to Madrid.

Breakdown of our carbon footprint, (*Other includes emissions from waste, paper, hire cars, taxi and rail travel)

With human activity being a key contributing factor to exacerbating climate change, we have engaged on this journey with our staff and with the view to expand this assessment to our other offices in the coming future. We also plan to continue to monitor, reduce and offset our emissions.

Our next step in this process was to choose an offset programme and we empowered our staff to make the choice. UK Tree Planting won the vote, the project mainly plants in school locations, helping to educate children and support wildlife habitats whilst sequestering carbon emissions. We look forward to continuing this process over the coming years and involving everyone at PDP London to help make a difference.