Gerding Edlen – People, Planet, Prosperity

By Allison Maynard, Communications Associate

At our Chapter we love to celebrate and share the wonderful work our members and partners are consistently doing. It is their hard work and dedication to sustainability in everything that they do which makes our Chapter such an amazing group of people. Our sponsoring partner Gerding Edlen certainly exemplifies this.

Gerding Edlen Sustainable Solutions provides comprehensive retrofit and distributed infrastructure development services to public and private real estate portfolio owners. The firm believes that superior building performance is more than just energy efficiency—it also includes optimizing water, waste and occupant comfort in order to maximize economic value.

They have also created their own internal, self-certification tool to use on their projects called the Livable Place Index (LPI). The Livable Place Index is a system for measuring the performance of the company's buildings under three categories: Planet, People, and Profit. The Planet category measures the environmental impacts of energy use, air, and water quality and assesses buildings according to the LEED Rating System. The People category includes assessments of the projects achievement of “20-minute living,” which Gerding Edlen defines as “the concept of having all services and amenities for a happy, healthy life within a 20-minute walk, bike ride, or transit ride.” The Profit category assesses a project's success in providing for economic growth.

So far, Gerding Edlen has completed over 60 green projects and 63 LEED certified projects. They also estimate that under the Planet category of their LPI for the total of all of their projects combined they have a projected annual savings of 52.9 million kWh of energy, 7,787 metric tons of carbon dioxide, and 33.3 million gallons of water. We're excited to see Gerding Edlen continue to add to these numbers!