Nominee
Austin Energy
Category
Innovative Company
Description
Austin Energy, the municipal utility in Austin, Texas, has demonstrated innovative leadership through a commitment to sustainability and performance. This commitment is evident in the work of the Austin Energy Green Building (AEGB) program and encapsulated in the design and construction of Austin Energy’s own Corporate Headquarters building, completed in 2022. The organization’s efforts and local impacts serve as a model for other municipalities and point to the important role of governmental and non-profit entities in moving the industry toward a high-performance and sustainable future.
Martin Marietta, an NRMCA member company was an invaluable partner who worked closely with Austin Energy and the AEGB Commercial program team to produce supplier developed mix-specific EPDs for their mixes and to create USGBC-compliant, third-party-verified EPD optimization reports to substantiate impact reductions--a first in Austin and the Central Texas region. This partnership has catalyzed concrete suppliers in Central Texas to produce mix-specific concrete EPDs for the local and regional market, and has made it possible more local building projects to understand and reduce their embodied carbon impacts.
(P.S. We even hope this submission will lead to the creation of an NRMCA membership category for municipalities and non-profits!)
Evidence
The nomination recognizes a suite of Austin Energy's (AE) programs, services and efforts that demonstrate and promote significant improvements in performance and sustainability through measurable design achievements and municipal sustainability initiatives.
AEGB’s new 2022 Commercial whole-building Rating is the most ambitious yet regarding materials and blazes a trail for other rating systems. It incentivizes reduction of material quantities and impacts using cradle-to-grave life-cycle assessment of a project's foundation, structure, and enclosure and leverages EPDs to lower environmental impacts and promote ingredient impact transparency. It includes a pioneering municipal initiative for mandatory reporting of quantities of new, high impact building materials prioritized by the City’s Climate Equity Plan, including specification of concrete strengths.
In the design of the Austin Energy Corporate headquarters building (AEHQ), completed in 2022, embodied impacts were considered a measure of design performance. The team used Whole Building Life Cycle Assessment (WBLCA) to optimize the design and lower embodied carbon intensity. The team reduced the depth of structural framing, optimized concrete mixes, and evaluated interior materials for environmental impacts and ingredient transparency. It achieved LEED v4 Platinum, WELL v2 Silver, and AEGB 5-star ratings, with over 10% reduction in whole building lifecycle impacts (more than 11% GWP). The design team worked with Martin Marietta, an NRMCA member, to produce supplier developed mix-specific EPDs for their mixes and to create USGBC-compliant, third-party-verified EPD optimization reports to substantiate impact reductions--a first in the region. This partnership has catalyzed concrete suppliers in Central Texas to produce mix-specific concrete EPDs for the local market, so that local building projects can understand and reduce their materials impacts.
Finally, AE/AEGB is collaborating with the Living Materials Lab at University of Colorado Boulder to develop the first typology-specific embodied carbon baselines and a set of simplified strategies buildings can use to reduce impacts.
AEGB’s Rating helps move the needle on building materials performance and impact reduction, the innovative construction process of the AECHQ directly spurred the creation of product-specific EPDs in the local market, and AEGB’s research collaborations are transforming the local building industry in ways that inspire other cities.
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