Sustainability

Embracing Low-Carbon Building Materials

We champion eco-conscious building materials, notably cross-laminated or ‘mass’ timber, as a key contributor to substantially reducing our buildings’ environmental footprint or “embodied carbon.”

Embodied Carbon

Gardner is evaluating traditional building materials to understand their environmental impact and researching materials that require less carbon emissions to manufacture and transport.

Embodied carbon represents the millions of tons of carbon emissions released during the lifecycle of building materials, including extraction, manufacturing, transport, construction and disposal. Concrete, steel, and insulation are all examples of materials that contribute to embodied carbon emissions.

At our Baltic Pointe mass timber office building in Draper, Utah, we replaced steel and concrete framing — materials that emit an enormous amount of carbon, with sustainably forested wood.

Our CO₂ savings are impressive.

• 2,061 metric tons CO₂ avoided
• 5,326 metric tons CO₂ stored in the wood
• The building’s CO₂ savings is equivalent to taking 1,562 cars off the road annually.

Learn more about embodied carbon:

Green Building Advisors

New Building Institute

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Constructing High-Efficiency Buildings

Calculating a building’s Energy Use Intensity (EUI) is akin to assessing a car’s efficiency and cost savings through Miles Per Gallon (MPG). We employ energy modeling to construct buildings with state-of-the-art efficiency and ensure optimal operational performance.

Image: Building heat loss is captures with thermal imaging. Energy modeling in the design phase can help predict a building’s operational efficiency.

Energy Modeling for lower EUI

Energy modeling allows us to test how design decisions impact a building’s energy performance, daylighting, water use, carbon reduction, and cost.

Energy Use Intensity (EUI) is calculated by dividing the total energy consumed by the building in one year (measured in kBtu or GJ) by the total gross floor area of the building (measured in square feet or square meters).

Watch Energy Star’s Video to learn more on how EUI is calculated.

With energy modeling, Gardner is building more efficient buildings and lowering their carbon footprint.

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Green Building Operations

We’re operating our buildings with an eye on energy conservation, water savings and waste reduction.

Building Energy efficiency: We constantly monitor our buildings to make sure they are running with optimum energy efficiency.

On-site solar: We’ve invested in rooftop solar for buildings, offsetting 3,252 metric tons of CO2 in the last year.

Water savings: Low-flow plumbing fixtures indoors make a difference, but the biggest impact comes from how we manage our outdoor landscapes. Waterwise plants and smart irrigation save thousands of gallons every month.

Waste reduction: With programs in place to sort waste streams at our properties, our recycling programs keep tons of waste from the landfills and promote reuse of our man-made materials.

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Transit Oriented Development

We make it a priority to create commercial centers within easy reach of mass transit.

Reducing Emissions with Mass Transit

Our commitment to sustainable development extends to the very location of our projects. Proximity to efficient mass transit systems reduces vehicular traffic and improves air quality. In Utah, we’ve developed eight projects adjacent to TRAX and Frontrunner. In Idaho, we redeveloped City Center Plaza to incorporate Valley Regional Transit’s underground transportation hub at Main Street Station. We believe that Transit Oriented Development (TOD) is pivotal to reducing our greenhouse gases.

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