Highlighting COTE's 2030 Commitment and Goals on Design Excellence

By: COTE Co-Chairs, Danielle Fleischmann & Roshni Krishnan

AIA Philadelphia's Committee on the Environment is a band of leaders working to realize a healthy, equitable built environment. We educate designers, campaign for policy change, influence design culture, and join forces with other organizations advocating for change. We have 5 subcommittees that work to support the AIA's Climate Action Plan, the Framework for Design Excellence, Zero Waste, Environmental Justice, and the 2030 Commitment. 

This year we are striving to focus all of our efforts around three overarching themes that relate our practice and goals to the Framework for Design Excellence.

• Design for Resources and Energy, which will represent our efforts to preserve the integrity of our existing building infrastructure and promote adaptive reuse with low energy designs. 
• Design for Change and Economy focusing on modern green construction techniques and the impacts that carbon can have on material procurement. 
• Design for Equitable Communities and Change, which we will collaborate with the Urban Design Committee and highlight the lack of resilient design in Philadelphia and including areas for improvement that we can all adopt in our daily processes. 

While all 5 of these subcommittees have equally important roles in advocating for sustainability and equity in our built environment, the 2030 Commitment is a simple way for all individuals or firms to support the core values of sustainability in their design, process, and culture. We encourage all Architects to be a part of the climate change solution by joining the 2030 Commitment and reaping the benefits of a better environment for your clients, your firm, and your planet. The process is simple: sign a letter stating you agree with the Commitment and want to join +1,200 firms working towards a carbon neutral future, create an account on the DDx platform which tracks progress of projects at your own pace, and create a Sustainability Action Plan aligning with your own values. 

The mission of the 2030 Commitment is to support the 2030 Challenge and transform the practice of architecture in a way that is holistic, firm-wide, project based, and data-driven. By prioritizing energy performance, participating firms can more easily work toward carbon neutral buildings, developments and major renovations by 2030. As signatories, firms pledge to self-report their projects' predicted energy performance annually and to design high performance projects. AIAPhillyCOTE's 2030 Subcommittee works to both increase the number of 2030 signatory firms and to support current signatories through high quality, tailored educational programming. AIAPhillyCOTE's 2030 Subcommittee collaborates with 2030 Working Groups across the country as part of the AIA's Climate Action Plan. Join the running list of Philadelphia-based firms that have already signed on and publicly show your dedication towards a better future. We are PROUD to share 2030's list of current signatories in PA and our list of current signatories in Philly, and encourage all folks to hold themselves and others accountable in our standards and goals to make a difference. 

Doubling its signatories in recent years, and now representing over 56,000 AEC professionals, the Commitment is a leading effort on addressing the climate crisis in our industry. In 2021, 417 firms reported 20,653 projects with an average pEUI (energy use intensity) reduction of 50.3% for whole building project and 32.5% for pLPD (lighting power density) reduction for interior only. For reference, the current Building Code only results in a 40-50% reduction. See more progress in AIA's annual reporting by the numbers and reach out to [email protected], join our committee page, or follow us on our social media to find out more. 

Special thanks to our particularly dedicated members: Janki Vyas, Josh Abbell, Roshni Krishnan, David Hincher, Shibei Huang, Kelsey Ross and others!

Are you ready to join and get to carbon neutral together?

We are always looking for volunteers in a wide-range of capacities, and we thrive on matching your interests, skills, or professional development opportunities with our Committee's initiatives. COTE meetings are held virtually at 8:00 AM on the third Thursday of each month. Anyone interested in participating is welcome to attend! Subscribe to our Newsletter to find out more! Or follow us on our Committee page and social media accounts @aiaphillycote