Two VG Projects Earn California Green Building Awards
Verdical Group is pleased to announce that our Malibu High School and BUCK Los Angeles projects each won Merit awards in the Energy / Operational Carbon category.
USGBC California (USGBC-CA)’s Green Building Awards recognize groundbreaking projects that demonstrate innovation, sustainable strategies, occupant health, and community engagement.
“This has been a remarkable year where we brought together leaders of our industry, unifying green building communities across California to accelerate the scope and scale of our work in response to the climate crisis,” stated USGBC-CA Executive Director Ben Stapleton. “Our California Green Building Awards now represent the leading buildings across this beautiful and diverse state, raising the bar for what is possible for our built environment to better support the communities they serve, not just here, but everywhere.”
Malibu High School is an approximately 70,000-square-foot education project located in Malibu, CA. One of the most remarkable design features of this project is the integration of PV trellises with shading strategies. The distinctive canopy supports a 360kW dc PV array that generates renewable energy onsite to support the project’s energy needs, in addition to shading windows and outdoor classrooms. The addition of vertical fins further enhances the shading effectiveness of the PV trellises, ensuring optimal performance across different orientations.
The project team prioritized electrification with integrated photovoltaic trellises that generate energy onsite and shade indoor and outdoor spaces. The energy modeling demonstrates a predicted EUI of between 0-2 EUI of kBTU/sf/yr, achieving net-zero energy performance feasibility.
BUCK Los Angeles is a global headquarters located in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo neighborhood. The 48,000-square-foot global headquarters reflects the client’s commitment to sustainability with its LEED Gold certification, and boasts innovative features on all 4 floors of flexible work, play, and collaborative spaces for 150+ employees, creative partners, and clients.
The largest way the project contributed to reducing its embodied carbon is by opting to reuse an existing building rather than constructing a new building. Because of this decision, the project’s embodied carbon is 206,877.74 kg CO2e or ~19 kg CO2e/ m2. The average newly constructed office building has an embodied carbon of 230-320 kg CO2e/ m2.
Through LEED v4 energy modeling, it was found that the project’s energy use is projected to be 21% lower than the ASHRAE baseline. Additionally, the project modeled an energy cost savings of 19% and an EUI of 30 kBtu/ sqft.
The awards will be presented to project teams at USGBC-CA’s annual Green Gala on December 11, 2024. Read the press release here.
