PODCAST: How sports is leading sustainability talks

James Cook: Google the phrase, green stadiums and your search screen is going to fill up with examples of arenas that have taken on sustainability initiatives.

The Paris Olympics has made headlines with its commitments to sustainability. They're using recycled materials. They're incorporating renewable energy. Mexico is working to create the most sustainable stadium in Latin America for the upcoming world cup in 2026.

Sports has the power to rally people together. It transcends boundaries and it creates this shared sense of excitement. But as the sports industry, places an emphasis on sustainability. There is a question that remains: will that commitment to sustainability resonate with sports fans?

Scott Jenkins: The fun thing about sports is it's a place to go where you're having fun with others and you can see that leadership can take that role and say, hey, there's better ways of doing things that are more efficient. We generate less waste. We use less energy, less water. We have a healthier food supply. There's lots of opportunities to do the right thing and share that with our fans. And I think people are very receptive to it these days.

James Cook: That's Scott Jenkins. Scott is something of a pioneer in the green building movement and sports. Currently he's the vice president of facilities management with the KC current. They are the professional women's soccer team that plays in Kansas City, Missouri. Today on trends and insights, Scott joins Rex Hamre, who is JLL's head of sustainability for North America. And we're going to be talking about innovation and sustainability in the sports industry. How to build a sports arena for the good of the planet.

This is Trends and Insights: The Future of Commercial Real Estate. My name is James Cook, and I am a researcher for JLL.

James Cook: Okay. Today's topic, it might sound esoteric, but it's not. We're talking about this convergence of sports arenas, sports facilities, and sustainability and the positive impact that one can have on the other. So, let's start back and maybe Scott, I'll start with you. I read that you were one of the inaugural members of the green sports Alliance.

So, it sounds like you've been involved in the origins of this story how did the green building movement come about in sports?

Scott Jenkins: My first experience with green sports was really 20 years ago. I went to Philadelphia and opened up Lincoln financial field for the Philadelphia Eagles, the building opened in 2003 and in 2004, the ownership decided they wanted to create some type of sustainability program at the stadium and to engage the fans.

So, it was really fun for me to be part of that early venture into formally, is it like for a stadium and our team to embrace sustainability and how to use the sports platform to engage with your employees and your fans to advance sustainability. So, it's been a 20-year journey for me. After I left Philadelphia, I went to Seattle and ran the ballpark for the Mariners.

And that's where I started collaborating with some of my counterparts in Portland and Seattle and Vancouver. And that's where we launched the green sports Alliance back in about 2009. It's been a 20-year journey. It's been fun to see, where it started. Obviously, there were some things happening before that the NFL was doing some greening programs around the Superbowl. But I don't think people really thought about sports and sustainability much until around 2004. And then with this formation of the green sports Alliance, we saw an opportunity and a need to help our industry and advance sustainability. So, it's been a good journey. We've made some good progress, but obviously we have a long way to go.

James Cook: And was the initial goal to start to get like just lead certified buildings or what was the initial focus of it?

Scott Jenkins: Back then, in 09, there were a number of lead certified buildings, but I don't think sustainability was really a common thing within the sports entertainment industry. And so, we recognize the opportunity to share ideas amongst ourselves as operators of these buildings. So, it was really meant to bring everybody in the tent, no matter where you were, if you were in a lead certified building, or if you hadn't really done anything before, maybe you dabbled in, zero waste or just energy conservation. We realized that we could learn from each other and create some playbooks on how to do it some better practices for our industry.

James Cook: Rex, why do you think the sports industry has focused on sustainability? Why is it important for them?

Rex Hamre: I'm Rex Hamre. I am head of sustainability consulting for North America at JLL and part of that work has included professional sports stadiums over the years and incorporating sustainability best practices into the design construction and operations of those sports facilities.

The 1st thing worth mentioning is that sports is obviously very visible it's a recognition that you have a wide stakeholder group when you have a sports organization. As sustainability has increased in the public consciousness, we have an opportunity for sports organizations and sports teams to really.

Make that a core part of what they're trying to accomplish. It was an opportunity for sports organizations to drive forward as a leader, like to show what's possible from a sustainability perspective and show that's something that people can incorporate into their daily lives.

And that major organizations were willing to commit to it.

James Cook: Scott, let's say you've got a, brand new, super sustainable arena, do you think that the average visitor is aware of what's gone into that.

Scott Jenkins: Going back over this journey over 20 years where it was really unexpected. And people didn't think about it, you just go to a sports event, do your thing and leave. I think today, 20 years later, the realities of climate change are painfully present.

I think the fun thing about sports is it's a place to go where you're having fun with others and you can see that sports can take that role and say, Hey, there's better ways of doing things that are more efficient. We generate less waste.

We use less energy, less water. We have a healthier food supply. There's lots of opportunities to do the right thing and share that with our fans. And I think people are very receptive to it these days. And almost to the point where I think they expect it to not do it and not have some type of program is really a big miss. And there is a lot of value you can create from it, from reducing operating costs creating some partnership opportunities to show technologies and investments in the community to make your communities better. And I think that's one place where sustainability really. connects with people is when they see the impact in the community.

James Cook: Rex, I'll ask you this, is there one thing that an arena can do, or is it a lot of little things, like what has the most impact?

Rex Hamre: It's really yes to both of those questions. It's both about being willing to make some of those really forward looking decisions about what are the systems that I'm going to commit to? am I willing to make a decision about a new technology that's going to be an important part of the operation of this building for, 50, 100 years and also that we have to have the day in and day out effort of educating the staff.

And the occupants and the visitors around 0 waste efforts and how they can be a part of recycling and it's all of those little elements to that add up to a real sustainability impact and making positive environmental change for the facility and for the community.

James Cook: So, let's dive into a few examples here Scott what's a great example of an arena, modern arena that's done this really well.

Scott Jenkins: In my mind, you have to start with Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle. Obviously, the naming rights deal speaks volumes there. And credit to Amazon for not putting their name on it, but their climate program.

James Cook: Yeah, so just to back up for a second, cause I'm not a big sports fan. So, Amazon. Paid for naming rights and then didn't call it the Amazon arena and they called it climate pledge arena. That's really impressive.

Scott Jenkins: It's great. It's really heartening to see a company, put their money in that kind of place. That's cause based. I wish everybody had a name rights deal like that. We'd all have net carbon zero value. Venues if that was the case, so on one hand it shows what's possible and it shows the value of connecting sustainability with a corporate partnership, especially in the naming rights deal.

But you can get those wins on at other levels too, that are meaningful to get the kind of investments you need to advance sustainability. It's a net carbon building and its net carbon from the embodied carbon in the construction and it's net zero and how it operates and its scope one, two and three.

So, it's doing everything the right way. And it shows what's possible and what we all should be doing. There's a huge gap obviously between where that is and where the rest of the industry is. And we've got to pull everybody along that journey, wherever they are and start getting everyone in that direction. But it certainly shows what we can do.

And the question is, you know, we're all starting in different locations, different places. How do we move the needle in that direction? There's a huge gap between where they are and where the rest of the industry is. But it shows what can be done.

James Cook: And that gap. It's really just about how much you're willing to spend, right? It's just because a lot of this is expensive.

Scott Jenkins: I think in our world, we operate on way too short a runway of thinking, okay, I'm going to spend this to get that. If you think about the long-term impacts of climate change and the threats to society and to our sports, there's obviously a risk component that needs to get put into the equation. But then also you need to think about the investment today and how it's going to pay off over, 10, 20 years, not just, today and my construction budget.

What do I have allocated to this? Or does it have a 3- or 4-year payback, and there are things we can all be doing that has a really short payback that are really no brainers. But when you're looking at mechanical systems and. How you cook food and what your source of fuel is in the building, those have some big implications on infrastructure and investments.

And, you're going to have a longer-term horizon on what you think your investment is going to pay back. And then I think you also have to think about the value to your brand, the engagement to your employees, engagement to your fans and there's value there that's real. It's not so easy to calculate that when you're, in a construction project saying, what's my mechanical systems going to cost me? So, it is a complicated, harder way of doing things and we can't just mail in the design and say we did these the last 10 arenas. This is how we do it. You've got to think out of the box, and you got to work hard to get to those solutions to reduce our energy and water consumption and how the controls function how we operate the building. How we measure and manage it. So it's taking things to a much higher level. So, it's hard. But the results are there you put the effort in and the investment.

James Cook: So, if the climate pledge arena is the best example, what are some of the different things they're doing that are unique?

Scott Jenkins: They're fortunate they're in Seattle where the grid is real green, obviously. we all suffer from that to some degree where we have a lot of carbon-based fuels in our grid. It's low carbon location. have a huge heating or huge cooling load. The weather's fairly moderate, they took, painstaking effort to design a system that's really efficient. There is onsite renewables that's incorporated into the design. They are collecting rainwater and reusing it in the building. From our standpoint as an industry, the biggest carbon component to our events is the transportation of our guests, our fans. That's by far the lion's share of the carbon emitted associated with the sporting and entertainment event. When you look at where a building is built and the infrastructure around it, public transit. That probably is your biggest impact on how much of a carbon footprint you're going to have to deal with, wanting to build on what Scott was talking about, that, the location and site selection being a critical aspect of the sustainability story and impact for the projects. And that's true across all of the built environment, wanting to have a dense walkable urban environment that really enhances the experience of all different types of buildings.

Rex Hamre: And that's certainly true with sports facilities. One thing that's interesting as a related point to that is that sports can also create that destination. They can be used to revitalize a previously challenging area of an urban environment that maybe has not seen investment for a long time and really create a new destination.

Or even in something of a more traditionally suburban environment, there's so much live, work, play incorporated into these master planned sports anchored projects, and that's something that I think is really quite exciting. There's ways to really leverage sports and use what's unique about it.

And then you create this destination that maybe traditionally in an area that hasn't been super dense or super walkable and. You can start to incorporate the mass transit into that project as well as create these nodes of usability and walkability, which is so important for sustainability as well as for the overall, Occupant and visitor experience.

James Cook: But isn't it a lot more difficult to find a good site that's reachable by public transit?

That's absolutely true. It's, naturally easy to say we've got a big clean site, 100 acres somewhere that we can have complete control over. But that's an example of really, when you start to rank order your priorities in any given development or any given project,

Rex Hamre: then some of those decisions become a little bit easier. Sustainability isn't just about spending more money Sustainability isn't just about having to make an investment for the long term because it's the right thing to do.

It also has return Oriented with it directly from a financial perspective It also can create cost efficiency in the context of a project, and that's something that, understanding how to order those priorities and then incorporate them intelligently into a project, that's how you can really start to make smart sustainability decisions.

Just as a specific example, you can have a major renovation of a facility versus coming out of the ground brand new. And that's where you get into again, considering scopes 1, 2, and 3 emissions, the embodied carbon of all of that steel and concrete that goes into a new stadium or arena, having that already in place, that's going to be a lot more sustainable and creating a really comprehensive renovation.

And that's where you can have already potentially a smart site selection as well as significantly reduce the environmental impact of the overall project. And then finally we were just talking about, it can be more cost effective.

James Cook: Is that message coming across through viewers of sporting events,

Scott Jenkins: Yeah. I think if you go in person, there's probably a greater likelihood that somebody is going to interact. If you've got a living wall and you've got different environmental features solar panels, water efficient fixtures, zero waste program in venue. I think there's a really good chance that people will see that on broadcast.

I don't know that they talk about it much yet. I think that's a. underdeveloped opportunity. If you see a building and it's beautiful looking and it's got solar panels around it and it's built into the architecture and it's part of that beauty shot, I think suddenly that stuff's starting to sink in. That is one thing that I like about the Mercedes Benz stadium project in Atlanta is there's quite a bit of solar panels around the project that creates some shade and shelter at the entry points. So, it's in a visible location and it's part of the aesthetic.

Rex Hamre: When you think about. Making sustainability more visible. It's really critical to incorporate it into the actual visitor on site experience. So it just starts to feel sustainable. Scott had a great example of the living walls. We're talking about incorporating biophilic design.

And so these are elements where people may not even explicitly realize sustainability, but they're starting to feel the benefits of sustainability through the experience. And then when you're looking at it from a broadcast perspective, You actually have video of the oversight and seeing the solar panels on site, you know, how often in a commercial building is that actually going to be on TV? And so that's another great example of where sports are actually incorporating showing.

That this is possible, and this is something useful. This is something that's become quite consistent in buildings today, but when LED lighting was still a question about a performance perspective, being willing to make that investment in sports arenas maybe helps people realize, hey, this is a technology that's perfectly reasonable to use in the home.

If these professional sports stadiums and arenas are incorporating them into something so mission critical as lighting at their facilities.

James Cook: Are there new technologies and new innovations that are coming out now? Or maybe you think are coming out in the future. And Scott I'll start with you.

Scott Jenkins: We've been all pushing hard for zero waste solutions and the reusable cups and reusable service wear something. It's like going back to the future, where we reuse things instead of had single use things and throw everything away. So, some of these things are not really innovative. It’s just let's go back to the smarter way of using our resources.

Rex Hamre: What's really next from a technology perspective 1st, it's worth highlighting that. There's so many proven technologies that can be better incorporated. Into our sports stadiums and arenas and so a lot of the time with sustainability. There is a misunderstanding that we have to make multimillion dollar investments in something brand new.

And that's the only way we're going to get to our decarbonized future. There's an element of that, but there's a great deal of smart decisions you can make about, Electrification of the facilities of high efficiency of HVAC systems and lighting systems. When we talk about what we're really seeing next, really much more advanced building automation systems are coming into play where they drive a lot of flexibility and smart automation into the building.

So, they know how many people are in a given condition space and can really gear the systems to most efficiently deliver. Comfort as well as energy and water efficiency for those areas. A real highlight is energy storage, which I think we're going to start to see more and more. That's something that can be costly today.

But in the regulatory environment that we face globally, as well as with available incentives in a lot of different locations, whether they be municipal or national. Energy storage, where you can start to create a lot of flexibility of when you're actually leveraging the grid and you have backup energy available.

That's something that I think we're going to see really start to get incorporated much more consistently in a lot of these stadiums and arenas. And then again, we can start to see the trickle down of that can be a proven technology then that's incorporated into a lot of our other facility types.

Where I'd like to finish is also that besides just the technologies and the technical implementation of sustainability, I think what's next is starting to see, the famous athletes really pushing this forward. We've seen some of that, for example, in formula one with current and former. driver is really incorporating sustainability into a focus of what they're doing.

And I think that's going to be a big driver for this overall cultural shift towards sustainability. And that can have a big impact from sport too.

James Cook: So, it's your take that because, sports are so popular and being visible about this stuff, it really is an opportunity to move the needle, with not just within the industry, but with just for fans as well.

Rex Hamre: Yes, absolutely. I go ahead, Scott.

Scott Jenkins: Sorry to step on you there, but sports is so popular. Almost everyone pays attention to sports at some point, right? And so, we've got a huge audience. And the other thing worth noting is sports fans and people in general, but sports fans tend to really care about the environment as well. So, it's in a place that has big visibility, big reach, and it resonates with sports fans, so we definitely have a role to play.

James Cook: That's perfect. We are out of time. Scott Rex, thank you so much for joining me today. I think this has been a fascinating conversation. Once again, a topic I didn't know a lot about and totally interesting. So thank you so much for joining me today.

Scott Jenkins: Thanks for having us.

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This episode of trends and insights was produced by Bianca Montes.

Our theme music was written and performed by Joel Karachi.