Happy Nice Mall

SEATTLE – The Seattle Kraken fans, who joined the NHL as the league’s 32nd team this season, had a lot to take in in the club’s first home game last Saturday. There were new players to cheer on the ice, new seats to find, and new concession stands to seek out.

Yet their biggest discovery seemed to be the 1,800-square-foot green wall that defined the mission of Kraken’s new home, the Climate Pledge Arena, which opened just in time for the game. Hundreds of fans stopped to take selfies in front of thousands of plants growing in vertical beds made of recycled plastic bottles.

Before the game, Jennifer and Shane Pisani were among those who stopped to watch the greens and screens showing solar panels, wind turbines and the phrase “The World’s First Net Zero Carbon Arena.”

Longtime hockey fans, the Pisanis were happy to have a team in town to cheer on. They were also pleased that Kraken represented more than just wins and losses.

“It conveys what the owners and team want to say to the community,” said Shane Pisani. “I look forward to sitting in a cutting-edge arena.”

The Climate Pledge Arena is truly state-of-the-art. It includes the latest LED scoreboards, fast food stands and ticketless technology. But the operators of the $1.2 billion arena are also trying to set a new standard in green building by reducing and offsetting the planet-warming emissions produced by them, their vendors, and even their fans.

Their tasks are expensive, time-consuming and risky and have never been tried in a gym before. Calculating emissions is complex and imprecise and exposes arena operators to accusations of “greenwashing” – providing misleading information about the building’s environmental characteristics.

Tim Leiweke, CEO of Oak View Group, which owns 51 percent of the building, acknowledged that the return on investment was not clear and that a lot of work had to be done to confirm that the building met its goals. But he expects the efforts to pay for themselves over time and for the arena to provide a blueprint for others in the industry.

“There is nothing today that will reward us economically because we are yet carbon neutral,” Leiweke said. “I believe our fans and sponsors will respect us and the awards will come, but first you have to lead and take your chances.”

A growing number of gyms have received LEED certification from the U.S. Green Building Council, but this designation, which stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, recognizes primarily eco-friendly infrastructure, not how a building works. By striving to be net zero carbon and promising to do so in a transparent way, Climate Pledge Arena can serve as a new model. Commercial buildings calculated 18 percent of US energy consumption in 2020.

“Over the years, people have used LEED to guide them, but it only gets you so far,” said Scott Jenkins, co-founder of the Green Sports Alliance. “We need to act urgently and business as usual is not going to cut it. The challenge is, how can we get others to follow?”

David Bonderman, the original owner of Kraken, which, along with Leiweke and his partners, owns the other 49 percent of the building, did not begin to build the greenest arena in the country. Their biggest challenge was figuring out how to elevate an arena with a roof and iconic windows built for the 1962 World’s Fair, along with the nearby Space Needle and the monorail into the city centre.

After that Groundbreaking in December 2018The 44-million-pound steel roof rests on 72 pillars so that the entire arena underneath can be gutted. Air conditioning equipment, solar panels and other machinery that would normally be placed on the roof have been located elsewhere on the property. A cistern has been built to hold the 15,000 gallons of rainwater drained from the roof and will then be dispersed by electric Zambonis to resurface the ice.

The project received high marks from environmentalists for preserving an existing structure in a neighborhood with good access to public transportation.

The renovation became more complex when Amazon bought the naming rights to the building last spring. An expenditure of between $300 million and $400 million for privilege. But instead of embellishing the arena with its logo like most companies do, Amazon named the building after one of his most ambitious ventures, Climate Commitment.

Company announced its commitment in 2019Promising to achieve zero net carbon emissions by 2040, ten years ahead of these targets 2015 Paris climate agreement. Colgate-Palmolive, Siemens and Unilever are among the 200 signatories since then.

Amazon has worked with builders to reduce arena emissions by mirroring efforts at their own offices and facilities to make sure it takes the walk. “We’re trying to draw attention to the climate crisis and to the solutions that exist,” said Kara Hurst, Amazon’s vice president of global sustainability.

The new assignment turned the project upside down. Leiweke has hired architect and environmentalist Jason McLennan, who founded the International Living Future Institute, which has created a certification program for sustainable buildings that goes far beyond LEED requirements.

To achieve these goals, the building failed to use fossil fuels. Dehumidifiers, pizza ovens and even the machines that dry the gloves of the players had to be canceled because they run on natural gas. Electric backups had to be found.

Next, the electricity powering the building had to come from renewable sources. Solar panels are installed in an atrium of the arena, a nearby parking lot, and the team’s training facility north of Seattle. More electricity was purchased from a solar and wind farm in Washington, and also powered by Amazon’s headquarters, which is close to the arena.

Arena seeks to remove 97 percent of its waste from landfills by composting, recycling and using biodegradable cutlery; By 2024, single-use plastics will be eliminated. Beer was served to fans in recyclable aluminum glasses on the opening night. Leiweke’s team is working with Pepsi and other companies to eliminate plastic wrap and other packaging.

“We haven’t had any significant feedback from suppliers, but check back in a year,” said Rob Johnson, Kraken’s head of sustainability.

The biggest challenge is to calculate the emissions produced in the building as well as the fans that go to the arena and the emissions produced by each vendor who delivers the products. The surveys will help determine whether fans arrive in petrol or electric cars, or use the bus, light rail, monorail and other public transport they can get on for free by showing Kraken or concert tickets. Carbon emissions will be added to the building’s scoreboard. So are the emissions from charter flights by Kraken and visiting crews to and from Seattle.

Sellers’ emissions are more difficult to track because their carbon footprints vary widely. Molly De Mers, who runs food service operations in the building, said three-quarters of the food used in the arena comes from ranches and ranches within a 300-mile radius of Seattle.

“This is where it gets tricky,” De Mers said, when sustainability is weighed against profit and loss. “Because when you start to include it, the costs obviously go up.”

Buying local means avoiding foods like avocados from Mexico. De Mers also selects foods that can be prepared in a variety of ways. Watermelons are served as vegan sashimi and their skins are pickled and used in salads. Carrot tops are made into gremolata, a condiment. Plant-based burgers, which have a lower environmental footprint than beef burgers, are sold in the main hall.

The arena’s emissions will be calculated at the end of each year, and Amazon and Oak View Group will purchase renewable energy credits to offset the carbon produced. McLennan said the data will be made public to help hold building operators accountable.

“No one has ever done this, not even in any of the deepest green buildings,” he said.

For now, the “Net Zero Carbon” statement on the green wall is more promising than true because it will take at least a year for auditors to calculate emissions. Even then, the building will be “functionally zero,” McLennan said, because “true zero is nearly impossible.”

This linguistic sleight of hand has alarmed some longtime environmentalists, who worry that if the building’s ambitious goals are not achieved, critics may argue that the project is tantamount to content-free marketing.

Allen Hershkowitz said: “To claim outstanding achievements such as ‘carbon neutral’ or ‘net zero’ without specifying what scope of impact is being referred to, or worse yet, to claim such a high achievement when it has not actually been achieved is greenwashing. He advises the NHL and other teams and leagues on environmental issues. “It feeds cynicism instead of inspiration.”

McLennan agreed that the building would only be certified after its first year of operation. But he is confident that the goal will be achieved.

“This is not greenwashing,” he said. “Everyone needs to look in the mirror and say, ‘We’re all part of the problem’ and say, ‘Okay, fair enough, but what are we doing now and what are we going to do next?’ we should say. That’s how I would answer it.”