Whatever your take on modern urban architecture, you can’t help but be
impressed with HSBC’s new headquarters in Mexico City. Four years in
the making, its 36 floors of glistening steel and glass measure nearly
140 metres from pavement to roof.
But as dramatically imposing as the Torre HSBC might be, it’s not the
magnitude of this 40,000 square-metre office that is turning heads.
Rather, attention is focusing on its innovative design. Opened in April
2006, HSBC’s Mexican headquarters is being hailed as the most
environmentally-friendly office in Latin America.
Among the building’s many eco-innovations are a rainwater collection
system, a water treatment plant and a system of efficient irrigation
for the Torre’s green areas. The roof is home to a veritable forest of
endemic plants that require little water and help clear the city’s
smog-prone atmosphere. The tower is also equipped with a device that
cuts energy consumption by 40 per cent.
As a working environment, it’s a far cry from most dingy, neon-lit
office spaces. Nine out of ten of the building’s 2520 workstations
boast a view outside and 75 per cent are illuminated by natural
light. For those that are not, the building’s architects have installed
an ‘intelligent illumination system’ that automatically regulates
lighting levels, thereby saving on the consumption of electricity.
In time, HSBC wants all its flagship buildings to be as eco-efficient
as its Mexican headquarters. As one of the world’s largest banks, that
is no small objective. It owns or occupies offices and branches in 82
countries worldwide. Under its Environmental Efficiency Programme, it
intends to invest tens of millions of pounds over the next five years
to improve the environmental footprint of its buildings. The funding
will be used to finance a range of efficiency measures, including
renewable technologies such as micro wind turbines and solar energy.
Another key element of the programme focuses on raising awareness among
HSBC employees. Promoting sustainable travel and renewable technology
will, it is hoped, become second nature to the company’s executives in
the near future.
Finally, the programme is set to build on HBSC’s existing efforts in
waste management. It intends to establish a comprehensive, company-wide
system based around what Jon Williams, head of group sustainable
development, calls the ‘three Rs’: reduction, re-use and recycling.
Cutting across the programme’s various activities are two guiding
priorities. Firstly, projects must be easy to adopt. And secondly, they
should – wherever possible – make commercial sense. ‘If you make
eco-efficiency easy, people will be more inclined to do it,’ explains
Williams. ‘What’s more, even if there’s no immediate pay-back, we want
the programme to inform us about what technologies can be used around
the world.’
As a first step, HSBC will be focusing on improving the environmental
performance of 50 of its major buildings. It will use these both to
benchmark the company’s total property portfolio as well as to provide
a source for emerging best practice. Every year the programme will be
subject to a full review, during which the success of the emerging
technology and the bank’s business needs will be taken into account.
HSBC is no newcomer to sustainable construction, as its Mexican
headquarters indicates. The other jewel in its crown is the bank’s
global head office in Canary Wharf, central London. Designed by the
world-renowned architect, Lord Norman Foster, the 45-storey building
was fitted with the latest environmental efficiencies in mind. It
boasts escalators that go into ‘standby’ mode when not in use as well
as an intelligent lighting system – the single largest installation of
its kind in Europe – which allows out of hours lighting to be
controlled via an employee’s telephone. It even has a bottling plant in
the basement, which helps keep the purchase of glass bottles to a
minimum while diverting 150,000 tonnes of glass from landfill each
year.
But where the Canary Wharf example really acts as a model for the rest
of the company is its success in motivating employees to change their
behavioural patterns. Personal rubbish provides a perfect case in
point. In the Canary Wharf offices alone, the amount of waste going to
landfill was reduced from 78 per cent to zero following the
implementation of a dual bin recycling system for employee use in 2006,
and the bank is looking to roll out similar schemes to all of its major
UK offices.
The overall impact of these efforts in its London headquarters recently
earned the building an Energy Efficiency Accreditation from the
National Energy Federation. The accreditation comes after the Building
Research Establishment rated the building operations and management as
‘excellent’ in its annual environmental assessment. It was the first
office space in the Canary Wharf development to achieve such an
accolade.
The challenge of spreading these best practices to the rest of HSBC’s
offices remains considerable. First and foremost is the problem of
scale. HSBC employs 312,000 people across the world. Communicating to
people in different countries and different cultures is no easy task,
admits Williams. To aid communication, HSBC has a number of
dedicated corporate responsibility teams around the group as well as 26
sustainability risk managers in all the major regions where it
operates.
Williams remains realistic about the extent to which sustainable
buildings can reduce the bank’s overall footprint. Even if all its
buildings resemble its flagship offices in London or Mexico, its
activities will still result in carbon emissions, albeit in reduced
volume.
In addition to HSBC’s in-house energy reduction and recycling
initiatives, therefore, it is also investing in external carbon
reduction programmes. In 2004 it began buying green electricity and
carbon credits to off-set the carbon emissions it could not eliminate
and in 2005 became the first major bank in the world to become ‘carbon
neutral’.
Of course, getting its own house in order is only the first step for a
bank of HSBC’s size and influence. The second, much bigger, move will
be to examine how the environment feeds into the financial services it
offers its 125 million customers. HSBC has already launched a business
strategy to help its clients respond to the challenges and
opportunities of creating a lower carbon economy.
Sat in their ultra-efficient offices in Canary Wharf, at least Williams
and his colleagues will have their immediate surroundings to inspire
them on that score.
