Built for What’s Next: Future Proofing Your Building

Climate change and evolving energy markets are rewriting the rules for facility management. Rising temperatures, volatile weather, and unpredictable utility costs mean your building needs to do more than just operate; it needs to adapt.

At Henderson, we think about how projects can be designed to survive and thrive with little outside help. Facilities that are self-powered, water autonomous, passively heated and cooled, and optimized to work with their environments, not against it, are poised for success. Buildings that restore, renew, and replenish sources of energy and materials create a long-term benefit for employees, clients, communities, and the environment.

Understanding the Challenge

Electricity prices are rising faster than the rate of inflation and the demand for energy from the U.S. electric grid is projected to increase 25% by 2030 and 78% by 2050. Add in the escalating impacts of extreme weather and the result is clear; facilities are under increasing pressure to optimize, renovate, and think differently about maintenance and budgets. It can be overwhelming, but our engineering experts know how to support innovation and sustainability to optimize facility operations around these emerging variables. That’s where Climate Responsive Design (CRD) comes in.

Climate Responsive Design

CRD considers the natural environment to build facilities that work in tandem with their environment. CRD recognizes every region faces its own challenges and opportunities to uncover solutions that align budgets, environmental health, and occupant well-being. Designing for these realities helps establish systems that increase resilience to protect people and asset value. Consider these factors across various regions:

• Coastal communities: designing with respect to storm surges and utilizing water for natural cooling or capturing for potable uses.
• Desert southwest: Manage intense heat and drought through solar shading, passive cooling, and renewable energy integration. Solar PV, energy storage, and passive cooling strategies reduce load on the grid and your bottom line.
• Midwest: Build for prevailing wind conditions and extreme weather events with structural resilience and adaptable systems.
• Northern regions: Address rising temperatures, shifting snow patterns, and flooding with flexible designs and smart drainage.

Since 1850, the Earth has warmed roughly 2°F, bringing rising temperatures and changing humidity and rainfall. For every degree the temperature rises, humidity rises about 3.5%. The rainiest day each year has also gotten about 3.5% wetter for every degree Fahrenheit of global warming, according to MIT.

Rising land surface temperatures are intensifying atmospheric warming and evapotranspiration, leading to more frequent extreme weather events like torrential rain and flash flooding. These changes demand stronger infrastructure, elevated critical systems, and designs built for hotter, more humid environments. Henderson Engineers use climate simulations from Oak Ridge National Lab to model how shifting conditions will impact building performance, revealing increased needs for dehumidification, cooling, and pumping. For long-lived facilities, that means planning today for larger water and cooling systems to meet tomorrow’s climate realities.

Designing for the future means anticipating these shifts. That could mean elevating generators above flood zones, integrating on-site renewables or microgrids to keep operations running when the grid falters, or managing the delicate balance between energy and water use in arid regions.

While utility companies are moving away from coal-fired power plants, which require significant water use in cooling towers, new and newly repurposed nuclear facilities also require high water demand. Instead of relying on utility power, incorporating distributed energy resources (DER) can reduce reliance on the grid, support regional water conservation, energy reliability, and cost stability. DERs are largely taking the form of solar PV in locations across the world, which are more commonly paired with energy storage, which offers the added benefits of resilience and peak-shifting, which can help reduce utility costs.

We design for what’s coming and we create facilities that adapt to any climate, operate with autonomy, and stay resilient no matter where the map puts them.

Renewable Energy: Take Control of Your Power

To reliably operate the electric grid, utilities must have more energy available than they’ll need to meet peak demand, otherwise known as reserve margin. Reserve margins in many portions of the U.S. will be below-target by 2030, despite growing energy demands. The increasing demand for energy from data centers and cooling needs from extreme heat events are straining the aging electricity infrastructure. Insulating yourself from the uncertainties of the grid can help keep your facility operating in an emergency and potentially lower your operational costs.

Hospitals, data centers, and other mission critical facilities need reliable energy at all times. Facilities that leverage on-site solar or wind energy with battery storage can enhance efficiency, reduce peak demand charges, provide backup during outages, and reduce reliance on the external grid. Battery energy storage systems (BESS) ensure power redundancy and stockpile renewable energy for usage when the grid is vulnerable or during peak demand periods to reduce utility costs.

Investing in renewables reduces the strain on our electric grid. While these energy sources can’t solely serve 24/7 power loads, pairing them with other sources of power generation, active energy management solutions, and energy storage helps empower facilities in their energy production and consumption.

Using Building Performance Data for Informed Decisions

You can’t manage what you don’t measure. If you’re operating in a jurisdiction with carbon limits or you have your own decarbonization goals, how do you know you’re staying on track? Do you understand how energy is consumed in your building? Do you know where you have opportunities for energy efficiency and long-term cost savings?

Buildings are no longer just energy consumers; they’re a strategic asset capable of producing and managing their own energy when designed with intent. Real-time building performance data can help you develop successful long-term capital planning and make building lifecycle decisions that help you meet your sustainability and operational goals.

Staying informed around your building operations helps you pivot when you need to, understand the most cost-effective time to utilize your stored renewable energy, and provide the context necessary to deliver various stakeholder needs.

Whether you’re managing one facility or an entire portfolio, real-time performance data helps you:

• Stay on track toward decarbonization goals
• Identify efficiency opportunities
• Align operational and financial priorities
• Establish cost predictability
• Avoid downtime and increase resilience through predictive maintenance

Henderson Builds the Future

You don’t have to navigate the complexities of climate change and energy markets alone. Henderson designs with the future in mind, delivering solutions for buildings to capitalize on design that saves operational costs while delivering operational reliability.

Whether your goal is to maintain a sustainable and regenerative mindset, optimize your energy efficiency, or understand your energy consumption so you can make informed decisions, we are here to partner with you.  As a proud signatory of The MEP 2040 Commitment and as a part of our Henderson 2040 Climate Pledge, we are committed to achieving net zero carbon on all projects by 2040.