AIA endorses building owner participation in cap-and-trade programs

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has joined with CO2toEE coalition to endorse building owner participation in carbon cap-and-trade programs.

The aim is to make businesses and building owners eligible for reductions in carbon emissions resulting from their investments in energy efficiency. A cap-and-trade system limits the amount of pollution large corporations and utilities discharge.

Under such systems, utilities and corporations buy and sell rights that allow the release of greenhouse gases into the air. A company or utility that reduces its pollution would be financially rewarded under such programs.

“This change makes the carbon market more efficient by assigning the value of carbon reductions where it belongs — to the people who actually make them,” said Angela Brooks, FAIA, managing principal at Brooks + Scarpa, and 2018 chair of the Institute’s Committee on the Environment. “With the adoption of CO2toEE, the cap-and-trade market can be harnessed to reward energy efficiency investors with the value of the CO2 reductions they create.”

New York City has two very large buildings dedicated to answering the 911 calls of its five boroughs. With more than 11 million emergency calls annually, it makes perfect sense. The second of these buildings, the Public Safety Answering Center II (PSAC II) is located on a nine-acre parcel of land in the Bronx. It’s an imposing 450,000 square-foot structure—a 240-foot-wide by 240-foot-tall cube. The gleaming aluminum cube risesthe equivalent of 24 stories from behind a grassy berm, projecting the unlikely impression that it might actually be floating. Like most visually striking structures, the building has drawn as much scorn as it has admiration.