SAN DIEGO — Global real estate firm Hines says the 415,000-square-foot building under construction at La Jolla Commons in San Diego will become the nation's largest carbon-neutral office building to date.
The 13-story tower will utilize a combination of high-performance building design, directed biogas and on-site fuel cells that will annually generate more electricity than tenants will use. The fuel cells, acquired from Bloom Energy, will generate approximately 5 million kilowatt hours of electricity annually, which is roughly the equivalent of energy required to power 1,000 San Diego homes.
Methane needed to power the fuel cells will be acquired from carbon-neutral sources, such as landfills and wastewater plants, and placed into the national natural gas pipeline system. Houston-based Hines and equity partner J.P. Morgan Asset Management have teamed up to develop the project.
Construction began in April 2012 and completion is scheduled for mid-2014. The building will be fully leased and occupied by LPL FInancial LLC, an independent broker-dealer, institutional service provider and wholly owned subsidiary of LPL Financial Holdings (NASDAQ: LPLA).
Both Hines and engineering firm WSP Flack + Kurtz spent time researching available technology for the project. “LPL Financial at La Jolla Commons is one further step in our objective to put new building strategies and technologies into practice in an economically viable way, using our experience to continually reset our own standards and quality,” says Jeff Hines, president and CEO of Hines. “First and foremost, we designed a Class A, commercially viable property, then we devised strategies to make it net-zero.”
Adds Gary Holtzer, global sustainability officer of Hines, “Our net-zero project at La Jolla Commons gives us a great foundation for furthering the use of carbon-netural technologies and fuels. Our next step is to adapt what we have learned and apply it to an existing urban property in a less temperate environment.”
The building's system will contribute to California's goal of deriving one-third of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020.
— Liz Burlingame