BXP, Inc. (BXP) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everybody or afternoon, if you're in Europe. This is Doug Linde from Boston Properties coming to you from our offices in Boston. And this morning, we thought it would be an interesting and informative conversation to have to describe to you how we, as an organization, are thinking about and moving forward, with our ESG, environmental, social and governance applications and programs throughout the company. I think there's been a long-standing understanding of and focus on governance, the G part of the ESG vernacular that we're going to talk about today. And it's pretty well understood. And obviously, most of it is known in our proxy statement. But I think there's a lot more transparency that we can provide to you on both the S, the social and the E, the environmental, which also, obviously, people talk about with regards to sustainability in the way that we, as an organization, are approaching those 2 particular areas of importance as we move forward into the next century and the next or the next decades. Today, we are going to talk again about both the social and the environmental -- and I just thought I would just sort of give you a little bit of a context for how as an organization we are structured. So we, at the Board level, have a Sustainability Committee. and that Sustainability Committee is run by an independent Director, Diane Hoskins. And she has a very important coworker in the form of Matt Lustig, who is from Lazard. And then Mary Kipp, who is from Puget Sound Energy and is a recent Board member and is running a utility company. Our social group is really managed or monitored by our Compensation Committee, which is run by Kelly Ayotte. And there's been a focus on diversity for quite some time in Boston Properties, but I think we're going to -- as you'll see today, give you a more in-depth understanding of how that works. And so we're going to start today with Blake Levy and Amy Gindel, who are 2 senior leaders at Boston Properties, both officers, who are the co-chairs of our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion council. And they're going to spend some time describing to you what we are doing around social and ESG. So Blake, let me turn it over to you to start. Thanks.

Thanks, Doug, and hello, everyone. Upon inception of the DEI council, the first thing we charge ourselves with was to create a mission statement to guide our path forward for the immediate future and beyond. The mission statement reads as follows: to promote diversity, inclusion, equity, and transparency as part of BXP's culture, business activities and decision-making practices, while also promoting the mechanism for positive impact in the community. This mission statement informed the structure of the council as we separate into 3 different committees. The recruiting and development committee, it's really employee focused. The company policies committee focuses on those that we do business with, such as suppliers, contractors, tenants, partners, et cetera. And community outreach committee, which really speaks for itself, and this deal is for the -- with the regions that we do business in. And so that's core. The DEI council is made of 3 committees in connection with executive leadership and the support that we received from the various departments. The mission created the framework for each of these committees to set particular goals and strategies to accomplish them. I won't read through all of these, but in summary, the policies committee goals are to encourage supplier diversity by promoting underrepresented business use and BXP's daily dealings. Similar to policies, the community outreach goals address BXP's social responsibility to support the regions we serve in, in a multitude of ways. And lastly here, the recruiting and development committee's objective is to attract and retain diverse talent through the way we do business and affecting the environment that we work in. However, you see there, there's the -- an inclusive culture bullet point. And as a solution to the cultural impact listed there, the committee formed and championed the employee resource groups. This group are also referred to ERGs, and they were established to encourage and promote a diverse, equitable and inclusive workplace that putting together employees with like interest or characteristics in an environment where they can share their true selves and build community at BXP. We see this as a tool that can create and confirm a sense of belonging and empowerment. Also here, you can see in this diagram, the process of turning these various initiatives into actions, creates lines of communication all the way from entry level to executive leadership like never before. The DEI council provides an additional resource for BXP to develop cohesive strategies for workplace enhancement and strengthen our position in the industry by gaining feedback from those closest to both ends of the spectrum. And so with the addition of the ERG leaders and the original 3 committees as mentioned earlier, the DEI council now sits at 26 members. These individuals are not only diverse in terms of ethnicity and gender identity, as you see here, but also offer diversity in the regions they reside, the departments they serve and the tenure at BXP. And that's what makes our DEI council unique. We're authentic. The DEI council is employee-led, the council members use their professional skills and personal experiences to develop and execute goals. And that was by design from BXP executive leadership. The council, its strategies and initiatives were created from the ground up. And as we move forward, executing with purpose and intentionality, we're essentially attacking everything that we need to attack. We're also influenced by company goals and the company is influenced by our goals. Now you can see our mission has resonated throughout the company. When combining the council that I just mentioned, plus all the ERG members that have signed up, BXP's DEI community currently stands at 128 total employees. And as evident from this snapshot, there's active regional and apartmental participation. Another way to think of this that is a 1 in every 5 employees at BXP as part of the overall DEI community. When considering this as well as the various non-DEI members that help support our initiatives such as marketing and IT, we are making our company stronger beyond just diversity, equity and inclusion. There's an inherent opportunity there that arises for strengthening member skills such as communication, organization, financial tracking and leadership, while also providing mentorship opportunities with senior officers and other tenured employees. Our belief is that this approach and the opportunities it provides results in a strong workforce where BXP's DEI culture and values are very apparent. Now diversity speaks to the statistics in the company, and really its makeup. The inclusion is the ability to participate, and the equity is not just making all opportunities equally available but also making the necessary accommodations for specific needs. Combined, we believe this will create a sense of blind so that current employees want to stay in advance and potential candidates see our culture and they want to be here. So as mentioned, diversity speaks to the company's statistics. And as we look at ourselves from the top down, we see that women make up 1/3 of BXP's Board of Directors and 42% of BXP's management positions. Ethnic and women officers have increased by 5 and 6 points, respectively, from 2020 to 2021. And when the council took a step back to 2015 during our benchmarking phase, we saw where we were coming from. And we saw that the foundation was already under construction. Since 2015, there has been a 7% increase in our ethnically diverse employee base. Also, ethnic officers have increased by 10% and women officers have increased by 12%. The DEI council is working to hold that upper trajectory and work even to essentially better it. So how is the council affecting the diversity numbers. Well, our strategy is that when broken down, the decision to hire or promote is based upon options and the process to evaluate those options. We're working to widen the net of diverse qualified talent and to retain the diverse talent we currently have. And then we want to affect the process for those in a position to make those evaluations, with educational tools, training opportunities and the overall cultural impact to the hiring and promotional practices. As it relates to the employee equity and inclusion portions of that pyramid I showed earlier, we believe our ERGs are one of our greatest tools to enhance our BXP community. And after the leadership structure was established and train was conducted for each group's champion, executive sponsor and leadership team, we were able to officially kick off in March of this year. And as you can see from this list, there's quite we've done since March. These ERGs can create a sense of belonging for those that are members and informed the company culture for those that may not be. The ERGs also provide a line of communication to the beat at the company. In fact, there are members that are DEI committee members and also participate in ERGs. Amy Gindel and myself being an example. We hear things that resonate with the ERG members and share these thoughts with leadership. Occasionally, leadership even takes part in the actual ERG meetings that we have. It is important that we reinforce the sense of belonging and follow it with an understanding that the employees' voices are being heard. Now while this strategy promotes diversity, inclusion and equity, the DEI mission also focuses on transparency as part of BXP's culture, which Amy Gindel will speak to.

Thanks, Blake. I appreciate it. I appreciate being here this morning. As Blake mentioned, it's important to connect BXP employees to our DEI mission by enhancing internal communication, providing transparency to all the DEI work we are doing. Currently in development is an Internet DEI portal page that will be part of our larger BXP connect Internet that will connect employees to a calendar DEI events, links to resources, new policies, DEI council contacts, employee spotlights and encourage all of our employees to hopefully get involved in our mission. We just recently became a member of HELM Life. It's an organization that will create DEI awareness for providing interactive learning events in a collaborative and team building atmosphere. They will also provide custom resources and internal communication tools to acknowledge heritage months, and cultural holidays. We're really excited for our employees to experience the HELM Life offering in the coming months. We also have recently partnered with CareerSpring. This is an exciting opportunity for us. CareerSpring is a nonprofit organization that leverages an online platform and a network of thousands of professionals to provide first-generation college students with career information, social capital and job placement services. CareerSpring will provide us not only a pipeline for diverse recruitment, but also community engagement opportunity for our employees through their career video library and adviser form. So we're really looking forward to a lot of employees and volunteering and helping with this platform and again, bringing us diverse talent. From a community outreach perspective and our strategy there, one of our largest initiatives this year was to create a Minority Business Partnership program. So we collaborated with a firm to brand our program forward with BXP, which is literally hot off the presses. Our goal here is to replace under -- place underrepresented minority-owned businesses in first-class office or retail space with a rental structure that aligns with their ability to pay and an opportunity to compete on a level playing field with our competitors. The BX team will serve as a vital resource for mentorship in all aspects of business operations and growth strategies. Earlier this year, we also signed a memo of understanding with Lafayette Square to help us source qualified minority businesses who can apply to our program. To date, we have actually signed 2 leases, CitySwing in Reston, Virginia, which is a 7-year lease. And the DEI lease is for the first 3 years, and SEO, which is a pretty interesting organization. Actually, it's a sponsor for educational opportunity. So they're actually -- their program actually educates and mentors underserved high school students, to and through college. So we're very excited about that lease and the DEI portion of that lease is to start in the fall of '23. The next group here we have is our company policies committee, the company policies committee focused on supplier diversity and creating new policies to support that. We made modifications to the construction RFP process to include a section dedicated to communicating our DEI values. So we're asking our contractors to include their DEI values and their responses and signaling DEI will be included as we evaluate their bid. After a contract is awarded and closed out, we will be tracking subcontractor diversity to set goals with a number of diverse subcontractors and the percentage of spend allocated to underrepresented business enterprises or for short, UBEs. We collaborated with the heads of property management to modify their bidding policies and bid approval forms. This is a large percentage of our spend. Our policy requires best efforts to include 1 of 3 qualified UBE suppliers in each award process. This bid approval form will track how many UBEs were invited to the bid, if they made it to the final round and really importantly, why not if they did not. So we can learn from why not and provide feedback to the UBE supplier so they can create a stronger bid for the next time. or we can evaluate our own barriers and hopefully make some changes to, again, continue to attract UBE suppliers to this process. We sent out our first ESG supplier engagement survey in early '21. And to assess our vendor diversity and their ESG initiatives. The completion of the survey is now mandatory for all new vendors since September of 2021. So we really want to capture the spirit of and the DEI mission that hopefully a lot of our suppliers are on as well as Boston Properties. And lastly, we updated our new vendor request form to include a mandatory field for UBE designations. Previously, it was voluntary. Now that's a required field. And we're also tracking that we've actually received the survey link sent from each vendor. So what's next for our committee. We've got our 4 subcommittees here with recruiting and development. And really their focus is initiating -- trying to work with DEI initiatives, rather and incorporating those in our employee recruiting and onboarding. We really want to still focus on educating our employees, providing DEI focused interactive learning when I talked about that with HELM Life and that partnership. We're going to continue developing relationships with third-party organizations and universities to increase the diverse talent pipeline just like our relationship with CareerSpring. And as Blake mentioned, we just got started with our employee research groups, but really want to encourage as these 3 groups formed to really encourage other new ERGs to emerge and continue to create a BXP inclusive environment. And we also want to support onboarding and mentorship to in order to create the formal program. So the natural hopefully, outcome of ERGs could be launching a more formal mentorship program. The community outreach group, we want to look to launch a BXP gift matching program for DEI community-focused charitable contributions, work with HR and marketing and really want to kind of work on our -- maybe more regionally or community service efforts, we can have a volunteer day as one of the perks for BXP and then expanding impact beyond promotion of ethnic diversity in our communities with a focus on gender identity and those with disabilities. And lastly, the company policies group. We want to continue a depository banking relationship with City First Bank, which is the largest Black-led bank in the U.S. and really hoping to expand on that relationship and perhaps with other banking relationships in our markets. We'd like to identify additional resources to source UBE suppliers. So the challenge here really is finding those resources and finding them and be able to bring them to the table during the bidding process. And then continue also awareness to all other areas of our business, while we're predominantly focused on the construction and property management teams. And then lastly, we wanted to set requirements for UBE inclusion in construction projects based on baseline data. So we're doing that gathering in 2022. But as Blake and I say, our work is not done. DEI is a critical component of our business strategy. We look through a new lens of responsibility now more than ever. We will continue to tackle this work with purpose, intentionality authenticity and transparency. I'm sure we'll make some mistakes along the way, but those mistakes usually turn out to be our greatest lessons. We have strong commitment and support from executive leadership. We have set clear goals and visible goals and we have accountability to achieve success and the ability to measure it. So we look forward to our next chapter for our DEI council and our mission. We want to continue to serve you, our investors, our employers, please suppliers, partners and in the communities in which we operate. I'd like to thank Blake, and I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to present this morning. And now we'll hand it over to Mr. Ben Myers.

Thank you, Blake, and thank you, Amy. It is tremendous to see the progress we're making on diversity, equity and inclusion under your leadership. And Amy, I want to thank you for your contributions to our sustainability program over the last 8 years. I'm Ben Myers. I'm Vice President of Sustainability. And today, I have the great pleasure of presenting our environmental sustainability program as part of our broader ESG framework. So our strategy is to conduct our business in a manner that contributes to positive economic, social and environmental outcomes. These are also called the 3 legs of the stool or the triple bottom line, people, planet and profit. We're focused on responsible, sustainable development and operations to grow our business. We want to focus on these 3 key pillars of climate action, resilience and social good, and we've aligned our initiatives with these pillars and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. BXP has been focused on sustainability for a long time, and that's because it's part of our strategy of being a long-term owner. And we've started tracking enterprise performance on KPIs like energy, emissions, water and waste back in 2008. Our success at Boston Properties is very much a product of collective action from the board room to the boiler room, from the Chief Officer to the chiller plant. We have a direct Board engagement to our Board-level Sustainability Committee that Doug mentioned, and we also have engagement through our regions and our Sustainable Operations Committee. Lastly, we have a corporate steering committee that guides many of our sustainability initiatives and provides input and support throughout the year. Our sustainability team works closely with these committees, and we also work with our President and CEO, Doug Linde; and Owen Thomas, along with regional stakeholders. We're focused on impact and substance, and we are managing closely our key performance indicators. Since 2008, we've made some significant progress that I want to share with you today, we've reduced our energy use intensity 27%. We've reduced our greenhouse gas emissions, that's Scope 1 and Scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions, a full 70%. We've cut our water use, a full 30% in gallons per square feet. And all of this was pre-pandemic. We've increased our waste diversion rate, 38%. We now have 84% of our portfolio certified under ENERGY STAR, LEED, and/or Fitwel well rating systems. 58% of our property area now is LEED certified, and 98% of that is certified at the very highest Gold and Platinum levels. Through these endeavors, we have avoided approximately $31 million in annual energy-related operating expenses, $3 million worth of annual water-related operating expenses. And we've also been involved in green finance initiatives like green bond issuances, issuing 4 green bonds totaling $3.6 billion, which has expanded our pool of investors. The company continuously is recognized as a leader in sustainability, as a leader in our industry and also as a leader, just in general. For over 10 years, we've received a GRESB Green Star rating, and we have the highest 5-star rating in the GRESB assessment. We're now listed in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index and were named as a member of the Sustainability Yearbook by S&P Global. We've been a recurring ENERGY STAR Partner of the Year award winner and now have the award for sustained excellence. We've been recognized by IMT and the Department of Energy under the Green Lease Leader program, the highest level of Platinum. In 2022, we're Best in Building Health winner and Newsweek named us as the highest-rated REIT, highest-rated property company in the real estate category in America's Most Responsible rankings of 2022. We've also been named by leaders like Barron's and Forbes among the most sustainable REITs in the United States and among the companies that are growing while also decarbonizing operations. We shape our initiatives based on input from our stakeholders, you, our investors, also our employees, our customers and communities, all of which have increasing commitments and ambition related to sustainability, sustainability plans, net 0 commitments, interest in investing in ESG funds in dedicated companies. Our communities have net zero targets by 2050 and are imposing new regulations, including building codes and performance standards, and our employees want to work for companies that are doing well by doing good. So ESG, just like DEI is part of our company's purpose. Today, I want to explain a few ways that we're differentiating ourselves and leading on sustainability. First and foremost, it's high quality and comprehensive performance indicators. We've developed a robust data management system tracking performance monitoring and active management using real-time data, so real-time energy data, real-time water data and real-time indoor air quality data from companies like Hatch, Measurabl and Senseair. We score and benchmark our properties throughout the year and have been doing so for over 10 years using EPA's ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager. We use frameworks like LEED, early in conceptual project development or when we're looking at an existing building and want to make it more sustainable. GRESB, as I mentioned, we recurringly report to GRESB. We also use frameworks like S&P, SAM and the CDP to measure our own performance at the enterprise level. Data quality has become increasingly important, particularly as disclosure demands have risen. So we've been doing performance assurance now for over 4 years with a company called DNV and we disclose annually all of our KPIs following the Global Reporting Initiative. Along with our financial disclosures in our 10-K, we've aligned with SASB and the TCFD and we were early adopters of the TCFD and have now fully aligned our disclosures with The Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures recommendations. So it's great to have data, but what are you doing with the data? So we set our ambition with goals. And we've set goals and hit goals, and we've been doing this now for several years over energy, emissions, water and waste. I'm very proud of our science-based target at the 1.5 degree level. We were the first office company in North America to have a science-based emissions reduction target at the 1.5 degree level. And we've also set goals for carbon-neutral operations by 2025, that Scopes 1 and 2, which I'll talk about today. We have a building certification goal. We have water use reduction goal and waste reduction goals. All of this is detailed in our ESG report that we issued on Earth Day this year, which you can find on our website, bxp.com under Commitment. Next is net zero leadership and carbon-neutral operations achievement. We measure Scopes 1, 2 and 3 emissions, and we provide public disclosure on all 3 emission scopes. These emission scopes totaled 192,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2021. On Scopes 1 and 2 emissions, we follow a location-based emissions disclosure methodology and a market-based emissions disclosure methodology. The difference between the 2 is in a market-based emissions methodology, you were allowed to account for voluntary efforts made to procure green power. So between the 2, there's a difference of 172,400 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent on a location-based, 80,800 metric tons carbon dioxide equivalent on a market base. I'll point out that Scope 1 emissions from gas and diesel amount to about 7% of our total emissions under a location-based emissions methodology. The other big contributors are steam. From steam we procure from district energy systems and emissions from electricity sourced from the grid. We've also been looking more closely and carefully at Scope 3 emissions. As many of you know, the measurement of Scope 3 is not always straightforward. The boundaries can be a bit ambiguous and the tools are developing. We're trying to use best tools like LCA analysis, Athena, EC3 to look at capital goods, for example, which I've highlighted here in the red box. Capital goods for us as an active developer is primarily embodied carbon associated with building materials. So we have an initiative now where we're acquiring the measurement of embodied carbon on all of our major ground-up development. We're also actively managing our carbon emissions associated with Scope 3 downstream leased assets. So these are buildings where we do not have operational control. But we're working on managing and monitoring these emissions and trying to drive down these emissions down using the levers we have available. Carbon-neutral operations applies to Scope 1 and 2 emissions. It includes energy-efficient operations, 100% renewable electricity, electrification and carbon offsets. I'll touch on each one of these today. You can see on the right, we've made significant progress, reducing site energy use intensity, which is the dark blue line from about 95 kBtu per square foot per year in 2008 and down to 55 kBtu per square foot per year in 2021. Our goal is 64.7% by 2025, and we expect it to slightly rebound with greater population this year. Our carbon emissions, which are measured in kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent per square foot have declined from 9.2 down to 1.9. I should emphasize that when we talk about carbon-neutral operations, about 1/3 of our reduction is going to come from energy efficiency. So that is, first and foremost, what we're focused on, reducing energy consumption to control operating costs, but also to reduce carbon emissions at our properties. This is a 2019 year location-based operational emissions was about 208,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. What I'm showing here is the reduction contributors from now until 2025. So we expect efficiency to contribute another 10% reduction in our overall emissions location-based. The grid will get greener, and anybody who's looked at real estate and carbon emissions understands the role of the grid and where energy is sourced is a critical aspect of how buildings decarbonize. Existing green power commitments and new commitments will make up another 63% of the reduction to zero. And then there will be a portion of our Scope 1 and 2 carbon neutral operations commitment that's made through offsets. Right now, that stands at about 20% based on 2019, but our goal is to drive that number as low as we can possibly drive it through energy efficiency and impactful green power procurement. I mentioned the importance of energy efficiency. I want to touch on some of the ways we're addressing energy consumption across our portfolio. First and foremost, it's with real-time energy management and intelligence. 245 of our commodity meters, that's electricity, gas and steam at 98 sites are connected to a real-time energy monitoring platform for Measurabl and Hatch data. Over 150 users across the company are trained and logged in an average of 12 times per month. On the left, we're showing an example output where this software identifies a building that didn't set back during a holiday. So by addressing these kinds of buildings starting up too early, running too late, setting high peak demands, we're able to conserve energy. And we've saved 13.4 million kilowatt hours that we've tracked and proved through the system since 2017, totaling around $1.4 million in avoided cumulative annual energy expenses. We're also investing in our assets. LED lighting retrofits have been an amazing opportunity for quick payback periods. Lighting power density reductions of up to 75% have been achieved by converting inefficient fluorescent lamps to LEDs. We've tracked 95 projects since 2017. These have a 1- to 3-year simple payback period, are often eligible for incentives that aren't even included there. The Prudential Center garage, for example, we replaced 4,000 fixtures and reduced total garage energy loads, that includes all the fans and other power supplied to the garage, 57%. An efficient office today has half of the lighting power density that it had 10 years ago. That's the low-hanging fruit and it's largely picked. What's the new low-hanging fruit going to be? Well, it's investments like we made at 200 Clarendon Street. This was a set of projects we implemented that we underwrote through acquisition of the property in 2012, where we invested $6.8 million and invested that over a 5-year period and avoided $9.4 million over that same period. We provided the ability to heat exchange in that building with the outdoor air. So we can economize now and use colder air during the winter months versus creating cooling in the winter months with a chiller plant. We added condenser water system upgrades to provide better cooling and more efficient cooling to tenant systems. We completely retro-commissioned the energy management system and made a number of other improvements such as variable frequency drive retrofits in the mechanical plant for smoother and more efficient operation of large motors. We achieved a 17% stabilized energy use reduction in a simple payback period under 5 years. At 601 Lexington Avenue in New York, we had steamed turbine chillers originally to the building from the 1970s, to be replaced for electric variable frequency drive lines. These electric chillers are much more capable of following the load more closely in the building. So they don't slam on and off, they ramp up and ramp down more smoothly, and they use less kilowatts per ton of cooling provided. We increased our ENERGY STAR score at this property 16 points and reduced carbon emissions 28%. So the $6.9 million chiller plant modernization saved $1.3 million annually for a 19% yield on cost and the graph on the left shows dashed lines, what the steam consumption in this building and [indiscernible] would be typically versus what it is in the darker red line now, cutting out all the steam use through the summer months for about a 60% reduction in steam use overall. We've developed from the ground up approximately 30 LEED-certified office buildings, and many of them represent the most sustainable office buildings in their markets. including 888 Boylston Street, which was positioned as Boston's most sustainable office building, the lowest EUI we've developed in Boston at 39. It has a dedicated outside air system. So this is a building that uses active chilled beams and the ventilation air is decoupled from the conditioning. All the conditioning is done with water, so hot and cold water and really high-temperature cold water. So not as cold as it would be in another building where you're using very cold chilled water, which means you can operate a little more efficiently. Building has 120 kW of solar photovoltaics on the roof and again, is our lowest energy user in the Boston market. At Salesforce Tower in San Francisco, it was the highest LEED rate at skyscraper in the state of California, LEED Platinum project and it has underfloor air distribution systems and the first black water treatment system in our portfolio that is going to be commissioned now with repopulation with our great partner at that project, Salesforce. 145 Broadway, the headquarters for Akamai in Cambridge, Massachusetts was the third project in the United States certified under the LEED version 4 core and shell program at the highest Platinum level. We're tremendously proud of this project. Again, it's a DOAS, dedicated outside air system project, solar photovoltaics on the roof and a lower window wall ratio, cutting down to about 56%, which helps conserve heat loss through the facade. A very exciting project for me personally is the conversion of existing buildings to net zero. We're leading the charge with a project at 140 Kendrick Street in Needham, Massachusetts, taking a 20-year old office building highlighted here in red and converting it to true net zero with on-site solar generation that will provide all the power necessary for the building on an annual basis. We're going to electrify the system, so we're cutting the gas and going with a VRF, variable refrigerant flow system, serving 2 new air handler systems with heat recovery, and we're adding installation. So the roof and the walls will be upgraded to an R30 level of insulation. So we're building tight, we're ventilating right, and we're energizing this property with sunlight. At the same time, we're avoiding about 90% of the embodied carbon associated with this project by using and reusing the existing structural materials. It's a tremendous project. I want to thank Wellington, our great partner here for working with us to get this done. Renewable power procurement. 100% renewable electricity with on-site renewal energy production is very much part of our strategy. We now have 13 projects, solar PV, totaling 8 megawatts of generation that save around $340,000 a year. On an annual basis, our projects produced a modest 1.6% of our total electricity consumption. But again, there's only 13 of them, and it's hard to develop renewables in urban centers where most of our buildings, our large buildings are located. We want to continue to work across our company to advance solar development, and we have several projects in the pipeline about 5 megawatts. We're going to increase on-site storage capacity. The project at 140 Kendrick will have about a 250 kW storage facility. We also have energy storage in Santa Monica at Colorado Center, 3.7 megawatts. And we want to create greater value by anchoring our net zero claims in solar PV. A lot of progress over the last 10 years. It's amazing to think when we developed Weston Corporate Center, 110 kW was the largest privately held solar array in Massachusetts. A lot has changed with -- since then and we expect to continue to capitalize on affordable solar photovoltaic development. Like this project here, it was a garage in Waltham, Massachusetts at our property, Bay Colony. This is 950 Winter Street. Added a canopy covered parking for tenants. They love it. We now have over -- or approximately 2,000 spaces at the company that have covered parking from solar photovoltaics. This is another example of 1 of those projects in Princeton, New Jersey, Carnegie Center. We have 4 projects at the site. This is the smallest of the 4, totaling 5.2 megawatts. But we can't solve our renewable energy appetite through on-site development of solar PV, so we need to look off-site. And there's a variety of ways we can procure offsite renewable energy. And we're working with all of our departments, accounting, tax, finance, property management, engineering to look at creative ways to structure renewable energy procurement through power purchase agreements, on-site and off-site renewable energy certificates, other green tariffs where we can opt in. They all have varying degrees of environmental impact, cost-effectiveness and visibility, which will impact our reputation. And so we want to be very careful about how and where we procure high-quality green power. Today, 70% of our power is green, and we're going to drive that to 100% by 2025. Electrification of thermal energy generation. We are endeavoring to eliminate on-site fossil fuel combustion from gas-fired boilers on all new development and planned for electrification of end of useful life. 50 buildings today totaling 12 million square feet of our portfolio are all electric. So it's not new. New future development electrification is possible, and we are working through the electrification process on several projects now. We also expect new and future development electrification challenges. For example, downtown high-rises and life sciences due to the space requirements and electrical demands of all electric systems. It's simply put, the transmission distribution infrastructure looks very different for a downtown high-rise that is all electric. And so we're working through that challenge now. Also on lab, life sciences, there are very high air change requirements. And in colder climate zones where we're located, and this applies to downtown high-rises, too, in colder climate zones to provide the heating necessary for the coldest mornings of the year for morning warmup will require upsizing transformers and distribution capacity very significantly, which will affect district level transmission and distribution needs and the reliability of the grid ultimately. This is a challenge, not for the real estate industry on its own, but for cities, policymakers, utilities and everybody who depends on a clean and reliable electric grid. This is one project where we're proceeding with electrification. It's 135 Broadway in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a residential high-rise, they're very exciting through electric resistance boilers and air source heat pumps. We will eliminate the need for natural gas combustion on-site or other sources of thermal energy off-site. Embodied carbon. so I mentioned our Scope 3 emissions were tackling in embodied carbon, and we're taking this head on. We have a target on every new development to achieve at least a 14% reduction in embodied carbon, and we're tracking through life cycle assessment embodied carbon on these projects, working with a variety of contractors, subsuppliers of cement and steel. We want to increase recycled content of steel. We want to drive down the use of portland cement, and we want to figure out new mix designs and innovation breakthroughs to reduce embodied carbon. There are a lot of people working on this. We need more. We need to transform this industry and it starts with transparency. It starts with measuring Scope 3 and adding to specifications, requirements to disclose embodied carbon-associated materials and to find and source and specify lower carbon alternatives. Finally, I want to say a couple more things about healthy buildings. We're very focused on energy consumption and carbon emissions, but we want to make sure we're balancing our objectives to reduce ventilation, reduce energy use associated with ventilation and wellness. We know from working with Dr. Joe Allen in the Harvard School of Public Health for several years, the importance of indoor air quality for cognitive health, cognitive performance and wellness. And so we are working through and have been working on the last really 6 or 7 years, but 2 years with a targeted group working with Joe Allen focused on clean air, a full strategy that we published in our ESG report on indoor air quality. And I think we have the industry-leading indoor air quality approach where we have upgraded filtration. We're doing testing and monitoring with qualified third-party professionals using the science. And also, we have an industry-leading program in terms of monitoring where we've deployed now nearly 500 real-time air quality sensors across our portfolio to monitor indicators like carbon dioxide, fine particulate and other things like VOCs, temperature and relative humidity across our portfolio. And the results so far look good. So we want to measure and monitor. Like I said, we're really substance and impact based. That's -- so we are very much focused on that data and mining that data to discover and learn about how our buildings are operating and maintaining a healthy environment to control infectious disease, but also optimize the productivity of the workers at BXP office buildings. Finally, skillful navigation and transition of risks and opportunities. There's been a lot of talk about the TCFD transition, risks and opportunities associated with climate action. Three major risks that we've identified that are disclosed in our 10-K, the financial impact of net zero requirements, for new development and performance standards for existing buildings. We believe that these risks and opportunities go side by side. Through product innovation and customer preference for net zero, we see this as an opportunity. We've been focused on buildings and carbon emissions and have made investments in energy efficiency. We understand these regulations and how they work and are preparing in advance for these penalties under Local Law 97, BERDO in Boston, BEUDO in Cambridge, BEPS in Washington, D.C. We're very much focused on these regulations, and we intend to continue to work with policymakers, utilities, our customers and internally to limit our exposure to these regulations. We also have the benefit of energy operating expense control by proactively reducing energy consumption and meeting these standards. Second risk our reporting requirements from investors and the SEC. It requires greater data quality control, assurance, increasing time and resources. We have an opportunity here because we've been focused on the development of a mature data management practice and industry differentiation through comprehensive performance disclosures made in our ESG reporting and elsewhere. We believe that this will result in greater inclusion in ESG dedicated funds. We also see a risk of reputational impact of-carbon-emitting operations and new development thermal energy requirements. This too is an opportunity. We can proactively adopt decarbonization and sustainability as a core value. Climate action and resilience leadership gives BXP an ESG edge. So what's next for us in our sustainability program. It's going to be continued physical risk assessment. We've partnered with Moody's ESG Solutions, are using the 427 tool to evaluate existing building exposure, acquisitions and potential new development sites. We disclose more detail in our 10-K, in the MD&A section of our 10-K. We're looking at transition risk, continuing to manage this risk, look at performance standards and compliance planning across primarily those performance standards, I mentioned, Local Law 97, BERDO, BEUDO and BEPS. We're looking at our supply chain. We're engaging to drive embodied carbon reductions, and we also want to drive renewable energy availability with utilities. We want to implement affordable and resilient electrification and heat recovery solutions at our properties that's new and existing. And then we want to execute our carbon-neutral operations goal by 2025. And with that, we're going to open it up for questions and welcome everybody back to the stage. Thank you very much for your time today.

[Operator Instructions] Let me start with a couple of questions for Amy and Blake. The first one is, I'm going to paraphrase, we're about to celebrate Juneteenth next week for the first time as a federal holiday. We, in Boston Properties, obviously really stepped into DEI with the tragedy associated with George Floyd. It's been 2 years. How do you make sure that at Boston Properties, we're in a situation where we can maintain the momentum associated with keeping the 110 people or the rest of the staff, the other 80% engaged in DEI because if people aren't engaged in it, it's going to peter out. How do you think about that?

Sure, I can take that. Right. So I think from the start, it was essentially a slow roll. There is a large process associated with setting up the DEI council. We had to go through benchmarking, the benchmarking then resulted in brain storming. That then resulted in setting goals. So it was a slow start off the beginning. And now we've enacted so many initiatives that the ball is really rolling. We're going off the cliff. We're -- our initiatives kind of push us forward. And so in response to that question, I think we're -- for the most part, we're going on the coattails of the ERGs and their large staff, right? The 120-some-odd people that are involved and the initiatives they have. So for example, Juneteenth, and having this big Juneteenth event that we're going to put online, the ability to celebrate Pride month through the multiple regions that we have. And kind of bringing that to a reality through our ERGs as well. So basically bringing recognition and acknowledgment to all of those, I think, is a big step. And then also to Amy's point of transparency, we have partnered with organizations such as CareerSpring that provide a level of engagement for employees that are or are not in the DEI council, and allow them to be involved in what we're doing and also provides educational opportunities for them as well. And so I think we're taking all of these initiatives that we have in all the various departments that we're touching, even ones that are not exactly related to DEI because they assist us with our initiatives, we're able to take all that and kind of move it forward. And I think we have gravity behind us in or to get us going in the right direction. And actually, it's just going to build from here on based on the path that we have ahead of us.

Okay. And Amy, here's a question for you. So it's really easy for Ben to put a chart up that says, we're going to -- we have spent $5.3 million on a bunch of energy reductions projects, be it changing the chiller plant or replacing light bulbs with the high-intensity kinds of machinery. How do you think about measuring success for social initiatives? And my answer so to be fair, is we have -- we actually are measuring it because we actually have goals, right? So we are truly -- we have defined goals associated with these things. But how do you then interpret that goal to some financial performance measure that we can articulate to our shareholders relative to why we're spending all the time and energy doing these things?

Right. It's a tough question. And I think from -- and the question really around culture and the impact of our culture, which I think is more in line with retention rates, right, employee retention, employee satisfaction, how do employees feel about belonging to BXP and our organization. So obviously, keeping and retaining talent is a big piece of, I think, it's down flow effects. I think from the supplier diversity and I've spent some time thinking about it, how can we really measure economic impact? Do we talk about how many jobs did we create? What level of workforce diversity have we achieved? And has it really -- how we really impacting the economy? And that's a tougher thing, I think, to do for our business. And it is not that black and white, certainly to measure, but I think we need to spend more time thinking about really the measurement and how we're going to really translate that and communicate that in a way to our shareholders.

I would also argue that things like we sponsor crew, which is commercial real estate women. And through that -- those sponsorships as an example, we develop relationships with women who happen to be leasing brokers. And we then have a relationship where that leasing broker has a personal relationship with someone in our regions, and we then do a lease. I can't definitively point to the fact that we are a sponsor of crew that we have members of crew actually being the reason for that. But I can tell you that those relationships are cemented and they become stronger through those types of initiatives. And I'm -- my assumption is we will be doing those types of things. Or if we're, for example, doing a lease with a minority-owned business that is very successful. I mean one of our retail areas, CitySwing in Reston, and that drives additional business to Reston, I think we can measure success relative to what we invested in that. So I think there are actual ways we will be able to measure success on the social side that are not dissimilar to what Ben is doing. Ben a question for you. So I'm going to paraphrase. Boston Properties has this 2025 goal of being effectively carbon neutral, net neutral. And you described a couple of realities associated with not really being able to effectively get to the point where we can actually not burn fossil fuels and particularly the mooring heat up of our buildings. Acknowledging that our grid today and for a long, long time, is not going to be "nonfossil generating grid" i.e., the grid is not just solar, wind and hydro. At what point do you sort of say, look, having to add all that transformer capacity and having to do the things that you have to do to get to a true or not burning any fossil fuels is kind of productive relative to what we are trying to accomplish with regards to our carbon-neutral initiatives and goals?

Yes. So Doug, we're going to evaluate that on a case-by-case basis on every project. And I think certain projects we're going to see like 135 Broadway, we're able to cost effectively get to an all-electric solution. Where we can't, a few things need to happen. First and foremost, I think there's an opportunity to create hybrid designs where heat pumps work in conjunction with highly efficient natural gas boilers. So that you're taking away 80% to 90% of your on-site Scope 1 emissions, but you aren't adding materially to the necessary electric distribution at that site. And so that, I think, is going to be the future of electrification for certain assets, certain product types for a period of time is going to look more like hybridization and reduction of Scope 1 emissions 80% to 90%. The second thing I'd say is we need a lot more intelligence focused on this. We need groups like the Urban Land Institute continuing their thought leadership. We just joined Department of Energy's Better Climate Challenge, specifically to engage other thought leaders, particularly the academia and in industry working on all-electric solutions. So technology needs to advance. And one of those technologies, I think, that's going to help solve this the stress that electrification you put on the grid is the portability of greenhouse gas-free fuels like green hydrogen. It's moving down the cost curve, but not fast enough. That needs to accelerate. So we need portable renewable fuels at certain asset classes where you have very high intensities in the coldest time of the year to make the grid more reliable. And that could also come in the form of green steam, which is moving forward, both in New York and in Boston, again, not fast enough, but that is moving forward.

Ben, another question for you. So you mentioned explicitly that certain of the jurisdictions actually have laws on the books regarding our need to reduce the amount of kilowatt hours of energy that we are procuring. A lot of our investors ask the question. So does that -- does this mean you're either going to have fines? Or does this mean you're going to actually have to put a lot of money into buildings that you haven't already put money into sort of how do you help us our investors understand sort of the relative positioning of our portfolio? And how you think we're going to get to the point where we can solve these issues and what, if any, cost is going to be required?

Yes, a great question, Doug. So sitting here today, based on the investments we've made historically and the ongoing investments, I believe we will avoid penalties through 2029, which is the first compliance period under most of these regulations. In 2029, it's really hard to predict what our exposures will look like because so much depends on the grid. And the question is if the grid operators default on their renewable energy commitments, will building owners be left holding the bag? And that seems to me like something we need to resolve with policymakers because when we forecast out, we're depending on a certain rate of decarbonization of the energy supply system. And if it occurs at the rate that many people have claimed it should and could, then we're fine. But if it doesn't, for some reason, we stagnate, it's a different scenario where more efficiency is required on site. So we're looking at this carefully at an asset-by-asset basis. We're in the middle of a transition risk assessment plan, not because we're concerned about the near-term penalties because of the work we've done to date, but looking out into the future. We also want to engage in dialogue with utilities, with planners to make sure that we are -- our grid is getting greener and that buildings are working with the grid to decarbonize the economy. So Doug, I don't have a dollar figure for you today, but we will be talking about that, I'm sure.

So the -- I guess, just to sort of follow up on that, I think everyone's focused on Manhattan. And in Manhattan, sort of give a sense of our portfolio and what you've seen over the last decade, while you've been leading our sustainability efforts in terms of the projects that we have been able to accomplish relative to the way our buildings are operating, moving from steam to electric, reducing the size of the chillers, thinking about building automation systems and data collection for reducing the amount of kilowatt hours. And how do you sort of see us position for the first and the second sort of piece of the Local Law 97 puzzle?

We own a lot of great, as [indiscernible] call them, aging beauties in New York, including the GM building, where we had some exposure. And we're currently modernizing that chiller plant similar to 601 Lexington, the case I've touched on in my remarks. That project will cause us to avoid penalties under Local Law 97, and that was our single greatest exposure. So I think through planning, through CapEx planning, we're able to anticipate these regulations and through end of useful life, replacement of chiller plants like the GM Building, which we would be doing anyways, and the addition of building management systems with robust controls and refreshing and updating the systems architecture of our controls, we're working on a pilot right now with prescriptive data and a solution called NANTUM at the GM Building that I'm frankly excited about to get a better grasp on how buildings are operating like Hatch data and Measurabl, using real-time monitoring data and BMS points to set back buildings and operate them more efficiently. And I think we're going to enter this era where we're operating buildings with an understanding of real-time energy, but also real-time carbon. So one of the changes that's going to happen is we're going to shift from this monthly or annual carbon emissions inventory work to real-time 24/7 carbon accounting. And that's going to send the right signals to building owners and operators that are looking at a $268 per ton penalty for exceeding a cap. And I think that's going to really transform the attention that's being paid presently to how buildings are using energy when it's not necessary. And one thing, too, I'll say, is buildings that were built in New York, particularly New York were built for large corporate occupiers. So they are designed to turn on and turn on completely as one big stack and turn off and turn off completely at the end of the day. And so that's changing as well with more granular controls, dampers that allow floors to shut down or zone levels to shut down. And that's going to make our New York Stock and the New York Stock in general, more efficient. So there's a lot of opportunity beyond lighting in New York. Also for heat recovery, we're involved in an assessment of a project right now, a heat recovery project that I'm very excited about. So Doug, I'll say we've been proactively investing, which has reduced our exposure to penalties, and we expect that we will be doing what's necessary in advance of 2029, and I don't think it's going to be -- we're putting new facades on buildings, but it's continuing to operate and refresh as we have been doing so.

Okay. So one last question, Ben and then we'll wrap this up. So during the last, call it, 2-year period of time, indoor air quality became a big deal. And you mentioned that we are starting to measure indoor air quality. From the tenant's perspective, I'm sure you have a lot of conversations during the pandemic, particularly because you were leading our health security task force, healthy building task force as well. About those issues, how do you think tenants are going to react to and how important on a going-forward basis, are all of these sustainability measures that we are -- that you're talking about and the way we are running our portfolio, particularly relative to the sort of the peer set that we have? And in particular, indoor air quality and how important has -- will that become on a relative basis for our tenants as they think about where they want to lease space in a portfolio like Boston Properties?

Sure. So there's been a lot of dialogue on the future of work and the future of office. And one consistent message is that there's an ongoing flight to quality. And I strongly believe that low-carbon buildings with -- that have great amenities and a focus on sustainability and indoor air quality are going to outperform. And you're going to see those buildings becoming more desirable. I'd say, for us, Doug, what we've done on indoor air quality, not just as an enterprise but at every building where we've assessed ventilation rates, filtration levels. We've done testing and monitoring and added these real-time monitors. It is absolutely a differentiator. But I think it becomes a market standard for Class A over time, and we're ahead of the pack, but it become standard. But we -- for the time being, I expect we'll continue to differentiate as tenants are more alert to indoor air quality because of the pandemic. Now we started looking at it with the cognitive function study from Dr. Joe Allen in 2015, where he showed that cognitive function doubles with better air quality in a laboratory environment. That gets anywhere near doubling, it's a worthwhile investment for knowledge workers. But -- so we knew it was a thing, it became mainstream with the focus on aerosols and particulates and air changes and spaces and the need to control the spread of infectious disease, airborne infectious disease. I think that indoors. I think that interest in air quality endures. I certainly have HEPA units in my basement. I think of the air is cleaner. Psychologically, I think that sticks with certain tenants, and we want to make sure we're serving those tenants that are focused on this issue. So we're going to continue to focus on indoor quality and make sure that we have an industry leading indoor air quality program for the tenants that care about what the air they breathe.

Thanks. Well, thanks, Ben. Thank you, Amy, and thank you, Blake, also for spending the time to talk to our investors about what we're doing with regards to both the E and the S in ESG. I hope that this provided everybody with a perspective that we think a lot about these issues, but we've also been thinking about these issues for a long time, and we've been very active and proactive about how we're managing E and S at Boston Properties. Now we're referring to ourselves at BXP, so I apologize for using the word Boston Properties. If you're interested in seeing a copy of the slides, feel free to contact Helen Han, who's our VP of Investor Relations. Thank you for your time and attention, and we will talk to you all again on a public basis at the end of July when we report our second quarter earnings. Thanks a lot.