Reed Hilderbrand’s Game-Changing Climate Leadership

By Jared Green

"We think this is a bold step," and "I find it interesting that other landscape architecture firms aren't doing it yet," said Claire Fellman, associate principal and director of research at Reed Hilderbrand, a leading landscape architecture firm.

Reed Hilderbrand is the first major landscape architecture firm to publicly release an assessment of their greenhouse gas emissions from projects and business operations.

In 2024, the firm and 25 other landscape architecture firms and organizations made a commitment to achieve the goals of the ASLA Climate Action Plan. Reed Hilderbrand found the plan to be a "galvanizing call to action," Fellman said.

To move forward that commitment, the firm established an internal task force to start measuring their own emissions. The group decided to first identify their primary sources of emissions before developing their own firm-wide Climate Action Plan. "We went all in on the numbers. This was about setting a baseline."

The task force included representatives from all parts of the firms' two offices and three studios, which include 70 staff members in Connecticut and Massachusetts.

A number of staff were familiar with Climate Positive Design's Pathfinder tool, which can be used to measure emissions from projects. But Reed Hilderbrand hadn't measured their office, business travel, or employee commuting emissions, so they embarked on a year-long, internal period of learning.

The result of the process is an easy-to-understand assessment that found in 2024 the firm released 8,416 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions. 93 percent of emissions were from projects, 5 percent were from staff travel, and the rest were from business operations and employee commuting.

The baseline assessment evaluated 12 projects completed in 2024. One interesting result: Looking across all these projects yielded no universal take-aways about how to reduce emissions, given how much the projects vary in size, location, and type.

"Our portfolio is quite diverse. The trigger for emissions is idiosyncratic. To develop take-aways, we needed to get granular - and look at emissions project by project," Fellman said.

Some sources of emissions surprised the team. "In some cases, for a remote site, we needed to import plants. That resulted in a huge footprint." While those trees and plants will sequester carbon over many decades, emissions from transporting them were significant.

Aggregates that form the sub-base of pavement had a higher carbon footprint than anticipated. Fellman said this demonstrates that there can be tradeoffs - "we can use a thick layer of aggregate to create stormwater detention areas or we can focus on carbon. Are we optimizing for water management or carbon?" These kinds of quandaries have caused the firm to evaluate alternative materials. "We have started to look into recycled and reclaimed aggregate."

There was another positive result from the assessment process: The landscape architects at the firm who used Pathfinder to evaluate project emissions are now much more focused on design details. The need for alternative, lower-carbon details is "spurring design invention," Fellman explained. One example: the firm's work at Turkey Bend in Houston, Texas, to reuse warehouses and wharf infrastructure involves partnering with local artists to re-imagine metal graffiti panels, concrete paving, bricks, and wood decking found at the site.

Turkey Bend, Houston, Texas. Reed Hilderbrand in collaboration with Buffalo Bayou Partnership, Artist Operations, and art consultant Hesse McGraw / Brian Pedroza DRONCAM - Artist Operations

Turkey Bend, Houston, Texas. Reed Hilderbrand in collaboration with Buffalo Bayou Partnership, Artist Operations, and art consultant Hesse McGraw / Brian Pedroza DRONCAM - Artist Operations

The assessment also showed how much landscape architects can sequester through their projects. Approximately two-thirds of the projects Reed Hilderbrand completed in 2024 will eventually become climate positive, meaning they will store more carbon than they emit. While some projects will reach a climate positive state sooner, in total these projects are expected to sequester 5,628 tonnes of carbon.

And even for the one-third of projects that won't ever offset their emissions from the initial use of materials, transportation of these materials, and their construction, along with on-going operational emissions, total carbon storage is another 563 tonnes.

From running their projects through Pathfinder, Fellman and the task force learned new ways to maximize that sequestration. For example, the data found that a wetland stores more carbon than a meadow. "So we will aim to make more of those."

Their goal with all this data and a new firm-wide action plan is to institutionalize a new internal feedback loop - apply the carbon lessons learned in the first stages of the design process and then continually run the numbers and learn about new impacts and benefits to consider.

And Fellman said the assessment has resulted in a new perspective: "We can't only evaluate projects through the lens of carbon. We need to look at water, soils, and equity too." Climate Positive Design's Pathfinder has also expanded into measuring a range of potential impacts and benefits in biodiversity, ecological restoration, equity, and more.

"We are showing our climate leadership by taking this approach. We will inform clients early on about our values-based decision making about land use. What we're really after is systemic change - not just measuring and reducing emissions but true change in urban systems. We can't keep optimizing but build the same way."

Fellman also sees great opportunities for landscape architects through more climate-responsible design. The shift towards low-carbon projects will increase demand for local materials and fabrication and support local native plant nurseries. "The transportation of materials has a huge impact. And then we have to look at the legacy of materials and waste. We can support local, circular economies."