At the recent AIA Portland Design Awards gala on October 17, a panel of nationally recognized jurors recognized the best built and un-built projects from a pool of over 70 projects submitted by Portland architects. Portlandarchitecture.com did a nice job of discussing the winners.  However, the blog did not cover a key theme that has been woven into the awards for the past few years by the AIA Committee on the Environment (COTE), namely CO2 emission reductions.

This metric has been implemented in response to the AIAs’ adoption of the Architecture 2030 Challenge at a national level. This year, AIA Portland required each project to complete calculations that ultimately yielded the reduction of CO2 emitted by projects as compared to a baseline of a typical comparable US building. Again this year, a small team of people from COTE reviewed the data submitted by each project to determine if the data were credible. They found that 61 of the 71 submitted projects had credible CO2 metric results. That is 86 percent of the total projects — a 36 percent improvement over last year. Some of the projects that didn’t submit CO2 calculations were justified in that they were not buildings or enclosed occupied spaces (e.g. Lightrail Mall Improvement), or something altogether different like a district power plant or a master plan, etc.

The CO2 emissions from the 61 projects, if they used as much energy as a typical US building, would cover 100 downtown blocks (10 blocks on a side) 300’ high. That’s about 2 billion cubic feet of CO2, or 57,190 tons.

The 61 projects reported as actual or proposed CO2 emissions an average reduction of 33 percent from the typical US building. That volume of CO2 is only 200’ high. There’s already significant energy efficiency being designed into projects in Oregon and elsewhere by Portland architects.

The next step? A 60 percent reduction is the Architecture 2030 goal for 2010 , so there’s still serious work to do. The good news is that 19 projects credibly showed CO2 reductions of 50 percent or more! Kudos to one higher education project that had the highest reduction at 83 percent.

Ahead of us looms the 2030 Challenge goal – all new buildings must be net zero energy and carbon emissions by 2030. If you aren’t familiar with the Architecture 2030 challenge, I urge you to visit their website (www.architecture2030.org).

Next year will be even more interesting with project submittals potentially required to meet a minimum reduction threshold to be eligible to compete. I expect other AIA Design Awards around the country will soon have similar emphasis on CO2 reductions. For now, our hat’s off to AIA Portland for their bold initiative to encourage greater levels of efficiency.