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Warburg Talks Retrofitting Buildings, Biden’s Clean Energy Plan

Sasaki Director of Sustainability and Resilience Tamar Warburg recently sat on two panels to discuss how the AEC industry can implement a holistic approach to addressing climate change in projects across disciplines and scales.

Retrofitting Buildings

Retrofitting existing buildings can have significant sustainability benefits—what are the most cost-effective and efficient ways to retrofit?

Bisnow invited Warburg and other experts to answer these questions at their summit, “Into the Future: Boston’s Path to Healthy Buildings.” The summit reached a wide array of owners, developers, investors, architects, engineers, general contractors, technical consultants, and brokers.

On the panel, “Rebuilding for the Future: Retrofitting Old Buildings for Sustainability,” Warburg pointed out that building sector contributes over half of global carbon emissions, and can work toward finding solutions to this challenge. She highlighted Sasaki’s sustainability approach, exploring the sustainability benefits of renovation on two fronts: the benefits of reusing existing building structures to minimize embodied carbon emissions for the health and wellness for the planet, and renovating building systems to maximize indoor air quality for the health and wellness of the occupants.

Warburg also described Sasaki’s experience across a range of client sectors—institutional, civic and commercial developers—seeking to reduce climate impact in their renovation and new construction projects by reducing energy loads and costs, electrifying building systems, and generating renewable energy with building-integrated solar photovoltaics and geothermal.

Warburg presented with an esteemed group of experts from across the industry: Dailey Tipton, Vice President, Evolution Energy Partners; Jacob Knowles, Director of Sustainable Design, BR+A; Anne Peck, VP, Architecture & Engineering Group, AEW; and Becca Rushin, VP of Sustainability & Social Responsibility, Jamestown.

A Clean Energy Revolution

The developers of cove.tool, a web-based app for end-to-end performance analysis, tapped Warburg to sit on a panel discussing the Biden administration’s plans to create a clean energy revolution. The panel, “Biden’s Clean Energy Plan: New Opportunities for Building Design and Construction,” explored how architects, engineers, and contractors can address the impacts the built environment has on climate change.

Warburg was joined by sustainability specialists Sandeep Ahuja, Co-Founder of cove.tool; Audrey Lee, PhD, Co-Chair at Clean Energy for Biden; and Patrick Murphy, Director of Sustainable Design at Vanderweil Engineers.

To watch the full panel, see below.

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