Our Journey to Carbon Neutral
Gresham Smith’s Core Purpose is to plan, design and consult to create healthy and thriving communities. An integral part of that is our ESG commitment to understand negative environmental impacts that result from our operations and identifying ways to reduce our carbon footprint as we strive for a healthier, more sustainable and resilient future.
We take this commitment seriously, which is why we’re proud to be carbon neutral for the our 2022 business operations. This achievement is the result of actions we’ve taken to effectively measure and quantify our 2022 carbon footprint, implement operational improvements to reduce net carbon emissions, and invest in carbon avoidance and removal initiatives to offset remaining emissions. This achievement is an important milestone on our journey to net zero, and we look forward to continuing to calculate, reduce and offset our carbon footprint on an annual basis.
Avoid, Reduce, Substitute, Compensate
We first measured our carbon footprint to understand how our operations result in carbon emissions. The inventory identified our four largest sources of emissions: fuel for heating offices, fuel for corporate vehicles, electricity for offices, and employee commuting and travel. Then, to we focused on four areas: avoiding emissions, reducing emissions, substituting renewable electricity sources, and compensating for the remaining emissions.
To avoid and reduce emissions from these sources, we’re designing our new office spaces to achieve LEED certification, instituting policies and procedures designed to reduce energy use and obtaining renewable energy certificates.
Gresham Smith-Sponsored Carbon Offsetting Projects
To offset remaining carbon emissions, we partnered with Cloverly, a climate action platform headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, to curate a portfolio of projects focused on offsetting the global carbon footprint. We’re sponsoring six projects, located in areas where Gresham Smith lives, works, and plays, that demonstrate ingenuity through refrigerant avoidance and destruction, nature preservation and permanent carbon removal.
Explore the map below to learn more about each of the six projects.
The Road Ahead
Achieving carbon neutral for our 2022 business operations is an important step on our journey to net zero. We’re continuing to calculate our carbon footprint on an annual basis, with our 2023 emissions inventory currently underway. In parallel, we’re looking for ways to avoid emissions from our business operations, seeking to reduce the need to offset emissions as we maintain our carbon neutral status.