Developer Hines, engineer MKA develop free embodied carbon reduction guide

Real estate management and investment firm Hines has released the Hines Embodied Carbon Reduction Guide.

The free guide, produced with Magnusson Klemencic Associates (MKA), is the result of a two-year effort, relying on MKA’s industry-leading knowledge of carbon accounting and involvement in programs such as the Embodied Carbon in Construction Calculator (EC3) Tool, according to a news release.

The “108-page program aims to create more sustainable development practices at Hines while establishing an industry standard for quantifying, tracking, and reducing embodied carbon in the commercial real estate development process,” the release says.

“By sharing the Embodied Carbon Reduction Guide with developers, engineers, contractors, material suppliers, investors, and other industry partners, Hines and MKA aim to affect lasting, responsible, and sustainable progress toward reducing the built environment’s carbon footprint,” the release says.

In a related developed, Hines says that its Salesforce Tower Chicago project, a 60-story, 1.2 million-sf office tower recently topped out. The firm says it is the first building to achieve a 19% overall reduction in carbon emissions by using the guide. Nineteen percent equates to a total verifiable structure carbon savings of over 7 million kilograms of C0₂, which equates to taking more than 1,500 cars off of the road for a year.