ING’s newly opened corporate office has been awarded the highest sustainability rating.
The ‘outstanding’ rating by renowned sustainability rater BREEAM-NL is based on scores over nine categories: management, health, energy, transportation, water, materials, waste, use of land and ecology, and pollution. The building received a score of 100% in the categories energy, transportation and waste, leading to an overall score of 93.7%.
The perfect score in energy makes the office, called Cedar, a ‘nearly zero-energy building’. ING has plans to go full energy-neutral with Cedar, as it teams up with European energy company Vattenfall to build a solar panel park nearby. The energy produced by the 3,600 solar panels there will be completely for ING, adding to the 2,150 solar panels on Cedar’s roof.
The building is also equipped with triple glazing and insulated window frames help to save energy. Various sustainable measures save up to 12 million litres of water per year. Plus, single-use plastic is banished from the restaurants and coffee bars.
More sustainable buildings
ING’s Corporate Real Estate and Facility Services in the Netherlands has been taking steps to improve the sustainability of its branch offices. The goal is for over half of its current new format branches to receive a BREEAM-NL rating of ‘Very good’ or higher by the end of the year. Especially noteworthy is ING’s building on the Herengracht in Amsterdam’s historical centre. The monumental building dates from 1686 and is one of the first of its kind to receive an ‘Excellent’ rating.
The efforts to make its buildings more sustainable come as part of ING’s Environmental Programme. This guides its own transition to become a more resource-efficient and climate-resilient company. Targets include reducing CO2e emissions from buildings and data centres by 80% by year-end 2022 from 2014 and reducing energy consumption by 65% by year-end 2030 from 2014.
