Last May, the Community Climate Collaborative formed the Green Business Alliance to encourage sixteen companies to take steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The goal is to reduce their collective emissions by 45 percent by 2025, five years ahead of when both Albemarle County and Charlottesville pledged to meet the same objective.
This morning the nonprofit entity reports the group has a collective 28 percent reduction in the first year since a baseline was established.
“Comparing 2021 emissions to the baseline year, which varies by member, the [Green Business Alliance] Boffset a total of 4,800 metric tons of CO2-equivalent,” reads their press release.
Some of the ways those reductions have been made are by relocations to new buildings. For instance, Apex Clean Energy moved to a new building that consolidated all employees in one place.
“The mass-timber Apex Plaza, which features green building materials, solar power generation, and on-site battery storage, is on the cutting edge of sustainable design—mirroring Apex’s work at the forefront of the new energy economy,” reads a description of the new building on the company’s website.
While the Apex Plaza building is not LEED-certified, it is one of the largest timber-built structures in the nation, and timber-built structures have a lower carbon footprint than those built of concrete or steel.
Additionally, the Quantitative Investment Management moved to the CODE Building, which is LEED-certified. Other participants have moved to LEED-certified building since their baselines, including the Center and the CFA Institute.
In addition, eight of the 16 companies installed over 1,600 solar panels on their properties, offsetting another 550 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.
For more information, read the Community Climate Collaborative’s blog post on the topic.
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