ESG AT TBC

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DEMYSTIFYING ESG

TBC.London is making waves as a low carbon, high social impact workplace. Rather than boast about being “the best” of this, or “the lowest” that, we simply want to give you the facts, so that you can decide for yourself. After all, our best tenants are those that have been empowered to make informed decisions, which ensures they choose an office space that aligns with their values.

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What is Net Zero?

Being Net Zero isn’t about just having an all-electric building. And you don’t get there by buying “green” electricity. Or by offsetting.

It’s about reducing the amount of energy you use to power, heat, and cool your building. You can only do this by driving real energy efficiency, starting with a highly efficient building fabric, low energy consuming equipment, and on-site renewables.

But we’ve also focused on embodied as well as operational carbon, setting clear goals for how we build and run TBC.London.

Embodied Carbon

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Do your sums?

The total amount of energy you use can be measured easily for any building, then converted to a per square meter basis. To be considered Net Zero, this “Energy Use Intensity” (EUI) needs to be below 55 kWh/m2 GIA per annum for the base build by 2025 and below 45 kWh/m2 GIA per annum by 2030, according to the targets set by the UKGBC.

New, harmonised guidelines are coming out later this year via the Net Zero Carbon Building Standard so watch this space.

Operational Carbon

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So what does that mean in terms of TBC?

TBC.London will operate at 39 kWh/m2 /yr or 30% better than the UKGBC 2025 target, and already below the more stringent 2030 limits. We’ve done the analysis using modelling so far, since the building is not built yet. But we promise to measure it once it is, and tell you about that, too.

We’ll do this using an array of more than 120 meters and sensors so we can figure out where exactly the energy is being consumed (and minimise it), whether a fridge on the fourth floor or a pump in the plant room.

At these levels, TBC.London will operate with 71% less energy than typical office, and 78% less than the regulations require (Part-L). The carbon saved over 20 years is like 7 flights to New York each week for 20 years, 1,200 trips around the globe in a petrol car. And 10 billion café lattes. Ok, we’ve made the last one up. Of course this saves pounds as well as the planet.

Bricks and mortar

Around a third of a building’s whole life carbon comes from its construction. There are guidelines to help here, too. LETI has set out a best practice limit for this embodied carbon of 900 kg/m2 for a newly built office. And 350 kg/m2 for a retrofit.

TBC.London will clock in at around 300 kg/m². We commit to updating this figure and publishing it at the end of the project when the dust settles. This works out at approximately 4,600 tons less carbon impact versus a new build. Equivalent to operating the building for more than 50 years.

More good news, you don’t need to take our word for it. We’ve deployed a clever bit of tech to measure every piece of timer, every bolt and screw, coming into or out of the building. Ok, it uses “AI”. As of this writing, total carbon expended to date including construction, waste, and all transport miles is just over 240 kg/m². So far, we have had 2,596 deliveries (spanning 129,250 miles) and 1,093 waste collections. Some 98.96% of waste has been diverted from landfill.

We commit to updating these figures and publishing them at the end of the project.

While others talk, we do

We are achieving these superhuman embodied carbon figures by driving technological innovation. From paint that eats greenhouse gasses, to tiles that are made like coral, to high recycled content everything. And of course by keeping the vast majority of the existing building.

But what we’re most proud of is re-purposing materials from other buildings – urban mining. We were told it was impossible (seeing a pattern?), but we successfully harvested 1930s steel from the former House of Fraser building on Oxford St and installed it in the structure of our building. We think this is a UK-first, re-using pre-WW2 steel. We recovered some 40 tons of it, and together with other re-claimed steel, about 10% of our building is made with steel mined from other buildings rather than the ground.

We’re going to leave these beams exposed so you can see for yourself, celebrating the original foundry stamps from places like “Appleby Frodingham Steel Company”.

So that’s what we are doing at TBC.London. No smoke, no mirrors, just real data. Practical steps to decrease the impact on our environment and increase efficiencies and benefits for decades to come.

Targeting -
Well Platinum

Achieved -
Wired Score Platinum

Score of -
94/100

Targeting -
BREEAM Outstanding

Targeting 5.0 stars

EPC A

Reduced CO₂
emissions by 78%

We have diverted 98.96%
of construction waste from landfill
and commit to zero
waste to landfill in operation

Re-purposed
and recycled furniture

30,000 kWh/year
generated from
on-site solar panels

Innovative in floor HVAC
system, 30% more efficient
vs traditional approaches

TBC.London is able to switch
to 100% fresh air mode

Dedicated e-bike
charging station

Filtered drinking water
stations at several points
in the building

Ultra efficient next-gen LED
lights operatin at 3.5W/m²

Volatile organic compounds
(VOCs) eliminated
in the building