Tennent

Brown

Architects

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form

Habitats

Our office person (FTE) global warming impact has decreased from 2.34 tCO2e in 2014/2015 to 0.31 tCO2e in 2021/2022.

We include staff commuting in our calculation using the Catalyst ACE Carbon Calculator. The office has steadily lost commuters who travelled from as far as Plimmerton on their own to gaining new staff who walk, bike, use personal electric-powered transport and catch public transport. The majority of travel to meetings and to site in Wellington is now by foot or by bus. There is no commuting when we are working from home but the Catalyst ACE Carbon Calculator factors in a emission factor of 0.908 kgCO2e/day per person.

There has been less travel per year by flight in the last 3 years, this is mostly due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We started offsetting flights from 2019. We offset every flight with Air New Zealand using their carbon offset program. We factor in the true cost of emissions as set by the government i.e. $25 per tCO2e for 2019 and earlier and $35 per tCO2e from 2020 til today. [https://environment.govt.nz/what-government-is-doing/areas-of-work/climate-change/ets/nz-ets-market/where-to-buy-new-zealand-emissions-units/#buying-new-zealand-emissions-units]

By way of comparison our Living Pā project has reduced embodied carbon by 43% from baseline and will have a total life cycle embodied carbon impact of 1294 tCO2e, a total saving of 966 tCO2e. This tells us our biggest potential for carbon saving is mostly through our projects.