Hudson Pacific Properties Achieves 100% Carbon Neutrality Across All Operations
Hudson Pacific Properties, Inc. ("Hudson Pacific") (NYSE: HPP) announced that it is fully carbon neutral across all operations. As part of its Better Blueprint platform, the company had previously committed to being net zero carbon by 2025, but has achieved the goal early through a combination of energy efficiency, on-site renewables, renewable energy certificates and verified emission reduction credits. These efforts have eliminated the Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions generated by the company's energy use of its buildings.
"Hudson Pacific is committed to leadership in sustainability," said Victor Coleman, Chairman and CEO of Hudson Pacific. "I am proud to have met our carbon neutrality goal five years early, but we are just getting started. We will continue to push the envelope to find innovative, tech-enabled solutions to minimize our environmental impacts, with a focus on driving down energy use even further and expanding on-site renewable energy. More than ever, we have a responsibility to our communities to prioritize climate action, and we are dedicated to expanding our efforts and sharing with our peers as we continue this important work."
Achieving carbon neutrality across all operations required a multifaceted strategy, including:
- Energy efficiency. Approximately 64% of Hudson Pacific's in-service office portfolio is ENERGY STAR certified; 65% is LEED certified.
- On-site renewables. The company uses traditional rooftop solar panels where possible and has piloted brand new technology such as building-integrated photovoltaics (solar panels built directly into the façade of a building).
- Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs). In 2019, Hudson Pacific converted to 100% renewable electricity at all properties that it owns and manages by purchasing RECs from a wind farm in Texas.
- Carbon offsets. The remainder of the company's greenhouse gas emissions are now offset by verified emission reduction credits from a landfill gas-to-energy project in Illinois. The resulting carbon offsets are Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) certified.
This strategy decouples the company's carbon and energy use, ensuring that Hudson Pacific will remain carbon neutral regardless of the operational changes being made due to the COVID-19 pandemic, such as increased ventilation and air filtration.
"Decoupling our carbon and energy use is essential so that we never have to choose between our commitment to sustainability and health and safety at our properties," said Natalie Teear, Vice President of Sustainability and Social Impact. "These commitments are all critical to our success as a business and to supporting vibrant, thriving urban spaces built for the long term."
"As one of the first major real estate organizations to achieve carbon neutrality across its operations, Hudson Pacific is a pioneer in sustainability," said Cristina Gamboa, CEO of the World Green Building Council. "This milestone proves that it is possible for companies to quickly reach bold goals that will have a lasting, positive impact on the environment and our communities."
Hudson Pacific plans to expand upon its use of sustainable technologies, in part through its pre-existing partnership with Fifth Wall, the largest venture capital firm focused on technology-driven innovation for the global real estate industry, to further reduce operational carbon. The company already has an active pipeline of technology projects around water recycling, leak detection, window film and indoor-air-quality monitoring and improvement.
Brendan Wallace, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Fifth Wall, said, "Hudson Pacific shares our mission to innovate and lead the real estate industry toward a more sustainable future. We look forward to working closely with them to further develop and implement some of the industry's most impactful technology solutions, including those which reduce carbon emissions."
Hudson Pacific is also working to reduce its Scope 3 GHG emissions from non-operational carbon, particularly the carbon embodied in building materials like steel and concrete. The company is measuring the embodied carbon footprints of all (re)developments and major repositioning projects and identifying opportunities to make lower-carbon design and procurement choices such as sourcing steel from local plants powered by clean energy or swapping out steel for alternative materials like mass timber.
Hudson Pacific Properties | https://www.hudsonpacificproperties.com/responsibility