At Henderson Companies, we believe that true greatness lies in the dedication to achieving ambitious goals, not merely setting ambitious goals. As Ralph Waldo Emerson wisely stated, “Not in his goals but in his transitions man is great.” This quote resonates as we navigate the path in meeting the sustainable and regenerative goals established within the Henderson Climate Pledge and Henderson’s MEP 2040 Commitment. While defining our sustainability objectives is a crucial first step, it’s the continuous effort, innovation, and resilience in our daily operations that truly define our success. Since publicly announcing Henderson’s sustainability commitments in 2022, we’ve celebrated success, overcome challenges, and identified barriers that continue to engage our domain expertise. Together, we are transforming our vision into reality, ensuring a sustainable future for generations to come.

The transition to net zero carbon operations across Henderson’s business by 2040, as part of Henderson’s Climate Pledge has been moving in the right direction since the beginning. When the Pledge was established, our key stakeholders determined we should focus on setting goals for the carbon related elements in our own operations where we have the most control and influence: refrigerants, electricity procurement, waste reduction, commuting, business travel, fleet vehicles, and stationary combustion at our office locations around the country. Since 2022, we’ve reduced emissions in these key areas by an estimated 32%. The biggest reductions were through generating our own renewable energy and purchasing electricity from renewable sources. Interestingly, our emissions from leaked refrigerants from an unplanned HVAC equipment failure in 2024 prevented us from an additional anticipated 5% savings. Events like this highlight the many unknowns even the best plans can’t anticipate. From a technical perspective, it also demonstrates the importance of transitioning from high GWP refrigerants to low GWP and natural refrigerants. Small leaks of high GWP refrigerants add up quickly. This is one good reason why our design teams continue to stress the importance of maintaining, monitoring, and integrating market-ready, low GWP refrigerant systems to clients.

Over the last year, our commercial refrigeration teams have continued to deliver high performance, low-carbon systems to clients across the country. Chances are you’ve been in a supermarket and purchased something that was kept cold in one of our low-carbon refrigeration designs. Throughout the last several months, our refrigeration team collaborated with Copeland to produce a white paper that analyzed the significant GHG emissions reductions that can be realized in grocery stores and supercenter big-box stores.  These reductions come from using natural refrigerants and repurposing waste heat to supplement building heating systems. The white paper is a great example of how to apply regenerative system thinking where waste is eliminated (waste heat in this case).

We’ve celebrated a number of successes, helping us get closer to our MEP 2040 Commitment of zero carbon building systems. Most recently was the completion of the Prosser Memorial Health Hospital, a $125 million, all-electric hospital in Prosser, Washington, that exemplifies how building operations can contribute to beneficial community health outcomes. Henderson also worked with George Washington University (GW) in Washington, D.C., to create a decarbonization master plan for facilities on their Foggy Bottom Campus. The plan identified key technical solutions supporting GW’s pursuit of carbon neutrality by 2030. Members of the Henderson and GW team took the opportunity to share details and lessons learned at Greenbuild 2024 in a presentation titled, “Zero Carbon by 2030: Turning a University’s Pledge into Reality.” Additionally, Henderson worked with Google and Gensler to deliver a new retail space in Boston that manifests the industry-leading corporate sustainability plans across all three organizations. We also have a number of exciting zero-carbon projects in design and nearing completion that we can’t wait to share and use as blueprints for best practices when executing future projects at the highest level of design.

Within the last year, Henderson recognized sustainability expert Laura Brandt for earning the Certified Decarbonization Professional (CDP) certificate from ASHRAE, the American Society of Heating. She’s one of the first 64 individuals globally to earn this certification, showcasing her advanced decarbonization efforts. We’ve also made incredible progress thanks to the immense sustainability contributions from Daric Adair, who leads the predictive modeling group and builds forward thinking decarbonization tool sets. As well as Matt Higgins, whose deep industry expertise in renewable energy, energy storage, resilience strategies, and utility structures provide clients with value based, carbon smart design solutions; and Dan Webb, operational technology consulting director, whose combined passion for technology, intelligent building operations, and sustainability helps client’s deploy industry-leading technology to optimize costs and environmental performance to realize maximum value from their building portfolios.

Achieving zero carbon design across all sectors in a 1,000-person design and construction company doesn’t happen overnight. It takes vision and a consistent effort to build a culture of sustainability and regenerative design thinking. Knowing that, we’ve invested in sustainability training programs and tools to help our teams analyze design solutions. These tools look at metrics like carbon, energy, water, waste, and costs – both current and future – to help our clients make the most informed decisions possible. In 2024, we courageously started tracking sustainability performance of all our projects using our homegrown benchmarking tool. The tool allows us to take the temperature of basic carbon metrics for projects across each of our seven sectors. It is said courageously, as developing a system to gather key sustainability metrics from the hundreds of projects delivered each year requires a significant amount of effort.  It takes patience to view the results, knowing zero carbon design doesn’t happen overnight and that in this age of social media it sometimes feels like every project by others is always hitting the mark. While results showed we have a long way to go to achieve our zero carbon goals, the exercise highlighted training needs, key building types and climate zones to focus on and opportunities to align strategies with client values. The exercise also spotlighted teams that are excelling and projects that can be used as case studies to help guide design teams to deliver high performance projects. In the end, the exercise is building team confidence and a clear path forward.

At Henderson Companies, our journey towards sustainability is a testament to our unwavering commitment to creating a better future. As we continue to innovate and overcome challenges, we are reminded that greatness lies in our transitions and the relentless pursuit of our goals. Each step we take towards reducing carbon emissions, implementing regenerative systems, and fostering a culture of sustainability brings us closer to our vision of a net-zero carbon future. We’re not just meeting our commitments; we’re transforming our industry and inspiring others to join us in this vital endeavor. With every project, every innovation, and every collaboration, we’re building a legacy of environmental stewardship that will benefit generations to come. Let’s continue to strive for excellence, knowing that our collective efforts are making a profound impact on the world.