Member Article

Architects sign up to zero carbon pledge

A firm of architects has signed up to a nationwide pledge to become a net carbon business by 2050.

Base Architecture was the first business in Chester and one of only a handful of organisations in Shropshire and North Wales where it also has offices, to have joined the Government’s SME Business Climate Hub.

The SME Climate Hub is a new ground breaking one-stop-shop climate action platform for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to curb carbon emissions, build business resilience and take the lead on climate change issues.

Base has pledged to halve its carbon emissions by 2030 and achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. This aligns with its Base Cares policy — an overarching company-wide strategy to reduce its impact on the planet.

The SME Climate Hub is co-hosted by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), the Exponential Roadmap Initiative, the We Mean Business coalition and the United Nations Race to Zero campaign, and has received support from several supply chain leaders, including BT Group, Ericsson, IKEA, Telia and Unilever, as well as funding support from Amazon and Verizon.

Managing Director Harry Reece said this commitment complemented the principles of the business and its Base Cares policy that launched earlier this year.

He said: “We had already recognised our responsibilities as architects and employers to ensure that the way we design projects and how we do business puts the environment at the forefront of our thinking.

“Signing up to the SME Business Climate Hub and publicly declaring our intentions to reach net carbon status was extremely important to us as an innovative design practice that wants to use its passion and belief in architecture to make lives better.”

Harry added: “As well as guiding the sustainable projects and design we already produce we hope it will encourage other businesses to follow our lead.

“We have a strategic plan in place and have already started to implement simple changes such as the bike2work scheme, careful consideration towards travel, a reduction in paper consumption and our plant a tree scheme to reduce and offset our carbon use. This strategy will evolve and adapt and we look forward to seeing what a positive impact we can make in the coming years.”

Base has seen its workload increase by 35 per cent in the past four years with an equal divide between residential and commercial projects.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Base Architects .