Groups take challenge to leave no footprint
An initiative aimed at making buildings with virtually no carbon footprint has yet to take root in Kansas City, but it’s starting to show up on area architects’ desks.
Principals of DLR Group, a national architecture and engineering firm, recently met with the staff of its Overland Park office to discuss The 2030 Challenge and how the firm plans to measure whether it is meeting the goals.
Architecture 2030, a Santa Fe, N.M., nonprofit, introduced The 2030 Challenge in 2006 as a way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by improving the design of buildings, which the U.S. Energy Information Administration said are responsible for about half of the nation’s annual energy consumption and carbon emissions.
The plan started by calling for all new buildings to be designed to use 50 percent less energy generated from fossil fuels than the regional average for that building type, a standard that increased to 60 percent this year. It continues increasing by 5 percent annually until 2030, when buildings should be essentially carbon-neutral.
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-David Twitty
