Feature image: Coca-Cola Uberlandia Refrescos in Brazil is the first LEED Zero Coca-Cola facility in the world. Photo credit: Petinelli.

As e-commerce continues its rise and the manufacturing, storage and transportation of goods continually demand that facilities efficiently handle the supply chain, the demand for warehouse and distribution centers remains at an all-time high.

Because of their robust size, location and type, these energy-intensive facilities can present challenges when it comes to building and operating sustainable buildings. Currently, over 6,100 LEED‐certified and -registered warehouse and distribution center projects exist, including projects certified through the one-off process and those certified through multiple building applications, such as campus and volume.

Three recent LEED-certified warehouse and distribution projects—in Missouri, New Jersey and Brazil—are setting a new standard for the industry, proving that it’s not only possible to build more sustainable industrial projects, but that it can be done while simultaneously maintaining the most efficient operations.

LEED Platinum for polyiso production

In Sikeston, Missouri, Carlisle Companies Incorporated, a leading supplier of innovative building envelope products and solutions for more energy-efficient buildings, earned North America’s first-ever LEED v4 Platinum certification for a manufacturing facility in November 2023 for its newest polyisocyanurate insulation manufacturing facility.

The nearly 500,000-square-foot production facility—the 50th for Carlisle Construction Materials (CCM), one of Carlisle’s building product businesses under the umbrella of the larger brand—was planned when Carlisle recognized the escalating demand for energy-efficient polyiso insulation.

“Our aim was to meet market needs while doing everything we could to minimize the environmental impact of constructing a new facility,” says Chris Kann, product manager, specialty products and sustainability at CCM. This included the strategic decision to locate the new facility “in the heart of the central U.S.,” Kann says, to optimize distribution logistics and minimize emissions linked to transporting insulation materials. It also included the choice to pursue the highest LEED certification for the facility, to reduce operational emissions.

“Building the first LEED v4 Platinum manufacturing facility in the U.S. was a true team effort,” says LEED AP BD+C Meredith Hendricks, vice president, sustainability at Entegrity, the project’s LEED consultant.

The sheer size of the building presented significant challenges, as did the building type and location. “With a building of this size, the energy load was much larger than a standard office building. That is attributed in large part to the usage of the building and the equipment running in the production area, but also just the overall building size and the amount of area that needed to be conditioned, tempered or ventilated,” Hendricks says.

A robotic mechanism for manufacturing in a large facility — The production floor of the LEED Platinum facility in Sikeston, Missouri. Photo courtesy of Carlisle Construction Materials.

To meet those challenges, the team took a holistic approach, developing strategies to address structural features ranging from acoustics to finish materials, as well as water and energy reduction.

Drawing from a 24,000-gallon storage tank to supply 133,000 gallons annually, the integration of a rainwater cistern for toilet flushing and irrigation exemplified a substantial reduction in potable water usage. Moreover, the adoption of low-flow fixtures resulted in a notable 37% reduction in potable water consumption compared to baseline standards.

Overcoming challenges to meet acoustic standards, which contribute to occupant well-being, required scaling up. For example, “reverberation time” is one of two required passive methods to fulfill LEED acoustic performance credits, along with sound transmission, which was reduced through the enhancement of walls, windows, doors and ceilings. To improve performance, instead of using a typical roof deck, an acoustical roof deck was installed, which cut down on reverberation by absorbing, rather than reflecting, the sound.

“The sheer volume of the space required an acoustical engineer to perform nonstandard calculations to address the volume of that area, because standard acoustical solutions and calculations didn’t work for a space with as much volume,” Hendricks explains.

Aerial view of a large warehouse — Photos courtesy of Carlisle Construction Materials.

A delivery truck in a shipping bay. — Photos courtesy of Carlisle Construction Materials.

Restoring 40% of the site area with native plantings and establishing a walking trail for employee use provides an opportunity to support the native ecosystem as well as for building occupants to spend time outside, enjoying nature or getting exercise during break times.

The LEED rating system includes six points that are available for locating projects in areas with existing resources such as transit and bicycle infrastructure. As is typical for industrial sites, the Carlisle facility is not located on a site already offering these resources.

“Given that the project was not eligible for these six site credits,” Hendricks says, “early on, we had to identify what our path forward would be to achieve LEED Platinum to make up for those points. We analyzed every strategy on the checklist to see what made the most sense given the clients goals, the site and the building type."

"One of the project’s most significant challenges was identifying energy savings opportunities,” says Hendricks, “particularly given the energy-intensive nature of a production facility, where the bulk of the load is attributed to production equipment.”

When the team explored further options for energy reduction, they shifted their focus toward renewable energy solutions and demand response strategies, including the installation of a 100 kW battery system and an 823 kW on-site solar array, which offset the building's energy demand. The array generates over 10% of energy used (by cost) through the implementation of on-site renewable solar power. The battery and other energy reduction programming strategies that make up the demand response program can reduce the energy load by 10% for up to two hours. It was critical to identify demand response strategies that didn’t impact the ability for the building to continue to produce Carlisle products.

“This strategic shift ensured that sustainability goals were pursued without compromising the operational efficiency and functionality of the plant,” Hendricks says.

Leading LEED logistics

Focused on the industrial warehouse and distribution sector in the U.S., real estate development and investment management firm WPT Capital Advisors recently achieved LEED Silver certification for its 768,750-square-foot TradePort logistics center in Mansfield, New Jersey.

“WPT pursues LEED certification on all new development projects,” says Spencer Gerberding, partner—asset management and sustainability at WPT, of the firm’s robust ESG program.

The state-of-the-art, cross-dock facility was strategically located on a 62-acre site to serve the dense population on the eastern seaboard. Currently leased out to an e-commerce logistics company, the warehouse and distribution center is projected to save nearly 50% in energy costs compared to a similar baseline warehouse building, per ASHRAE Standard 90.1-2010, says LEED Fellow Michael Pavelsky, LEED AP BD+C. Pavelsky is the senior associate and sustainability director at The Sheward Partnership LLC, an architecture, planning, urban design and sustainability consulting firm that served as the LEED consultant on the project.

Aerial view of a large warehouse surrounded by trucks and by landscaping.. — The LEED Silver TradePort logistics center is over 760,000 square feet. Photo courtesy of WPT Capital Advisors.

“Often, buildings such as this type are operating 365 days a year, 24 hours, seven days a week, so any reduction in energy demand has a significant impact on the building’s long-term performance,” says Pavelsky.

Those reduction measures included the installation of high-performance lighting and cellular-enabled energy monitoring technology, as well as a high-efficiency heating system for the building and optimized insulation. To help with heat island reduction, the project incorporated a white roofing membrane and maximized installation of light-colored concrete throughout the hardscaping on the project site.

“Industrial buildings such as this project are often not given enough credit for the positive impact that specific design and construction strategies can have on not only the long-term carbon and environmental footprint of the project, but also on the embodied carbon and footprint construction of the building,” Pavelsky says. “Having a very forward-thinking owner such as WPT Capital Advisors certainly supports this process,” he adds.

Aerial view of roofing materials being added by many engineers in yellow vests. — Incorporating a white roofing membrane was one way the project targeted heat island reduction. Photo courtesy of WPT Capital Advisors.

Pavelsky shares that the project incorporated over 20% recycled content in building materials and over 30 products with contributing EPDs, representing over three times the number of required EPDs to earn the LEED credit.

To reduce the emissions impact of concrete used for the building (such buildings incorporate a significant amount of concrete, steel, insulation and roofing material, Pavelsky notes), the team sourced the concrete materials from local and regional suppliers to minimize the environmental impact associated with trucking.

They also had in mind to replace a portion of the Portland cement in the concrete mix with slag and fly ash, which would further help to reduce emissions, but it was unavailable at the time of the concrete pour. In their efforts to use more sustainable materials overall, they incorporated over 20% recycled content in all the reinforcing materials within the concrete walls, slab, footings and foundations.

“I would encourage all project teams to explore the feasibility of exploring the various strategies in the market today to reduce concrete emissions and develop a plan that the entire team is comfortable with,” advises Pavelsky.

Over 20% recycled content was included in all the reinforcing materials within the concrete walls, slab, footings and foundations. Photo courtesy of WPT Capital Advisors.

The team also worked closely with civil and landscape team members to add extensive landscaping and rain gardens to maximize vegetated open space, while also reducing turf grass throughout the site. As with Carlisle’s project, this helped mitigate site and location challenges.

Looking forward, Gerberding notes, the building has many sustainability attributes to further build upon as WPT considers renewable energy deployment through rooftop solar and battery storage solutions. The company is constantly exploring decarbonization solutions across its portfolio via an energy monitoring program that collects real-time data on 100% of the water, electric and gas usage on all properties.

These decarbonization solutions reduce costs for tenants, eliminate the risks associated with stranded assets and support WPT’s path to a net zero energy portfolio as soon as possible to reduce its overall carbon footprint.

Coca-Cola going for zero

In Uberlandia, Brazil, Coca-Cola Uberlandia Refrescos is the first LEED Zero Coca-Cola facility in the world. The multiphase project includes a distribution center and four auxiliary buildings (a restaurant, offices, a marketing building and an employee-amenities building), all of which are LEED Platinum.

The distribution center is also LEED Zero Energy and LEED Zero Carbon, with the other four buildings working toward the same certification. The entire campus, which will soon also include a production factory as the project’s third and final phase, has achieved LEED Zero Waste.

Rows of crates stacked in a giant warehouse. — Photo credit: Petinelli.

“Industrial facilities like Coca-Coca’s in Uberlandia use a lot of energy,” says LEED Fellow and LEED AP BD+C Guido Petinelli, managing director of Petinelli, an engineering and green building consulting firm and LEED Proven Provider. “Most people think that this would be the greatest challenge to certification. In fact, it was the desire to build an excellent, really efficient plant that made achieving LEED a natural consequence for the company.”

A large open-office space with many desks and a modern mini-lounge area. — Employee office spaces are in LEED Platinum buildings. Photo credit: Petinelli.

Uberlandia Refrescos is one of the last independent bottling companies left within the Coca-Cola system in Brazil, Petinelli notes. “Industrial facilities are complex by their very nature. And when you add to the fact that the city of Uberlandia is in a remote, inland part of Brazil, we recognized from the beginning that building a cutting-edge, innovative and sustainable facility would be a challenge,” he says. “Leadership was a precondition, but also [through] being resourceful and with a lot of planning, we got there.”

Petinelli has worked with Coca-Cola on multiple sites over the past 12 years and has benefited from the experience. “Uberlandia Refrescos is just the latest, and it benefited from the improvements and know-how developed on past projects,” Petinelli says. “One example would be lighting power density, where we achieved a 71% reduction when compared to our first project with the group.”

The main solutions implemented to achieve self-sufficiency include a photovoltaic system on the roof of the distribution center. This includes 840 modules with a capacity of 222.6 kWP, which generates 100% of the energy needed for operations. This was combined with the ultra-efficient lighting system (ideal light levels were achieved through computational simulations, and LED luminaires with motion sensors were used throughout) and maximizing natural daylight (such as openings in the polycarbonate prismatic roof), which together led to a total annual energy savings of R$ 490,000 (approximately $97,000 USD) over three years of operation

“Economic viability was a crucial factor in adopting the zero energy concept by Coca-Cola Uberlandia,” says Petinelli. “Recognizing that lower energy consumption translates to reduced investment needed in energy generation, the project team prioritized energy efficiency.”

Aerial view of a warehouse with solar panels on top and trucks in the lot next to it. — A PV system on the roof of the distribution center generates 100% of the energy needed for operations. Photo credit: Petinelli.

There is also a rainwater harvesting system, which, along with a system for treating greywater and blackwater, is reused for irrigation, flushing and external cleaning. With a 94% reduction in potable water usage, the facility is now on its way to achieving LEED Zero Water and becoming self-sufficient across the board.

In addition, 97.9% of the waste produced is reused or recycled. While organic waste is composted, waste that cannot be reused or recycled is transformed or upcycled. For the distribution center, 91% of the construction waste was diverted from landfills and recycled.

“By raising the bar and setting new performance and sustainability benchmarks, Uberlandia demonstrates that achieving net zero targets is possible now, and that we don’t have to wait until 2030,” says Petinelli. “Uberlandia is not an isolated demonstration project. It is a multi-hundred-million-dollar investment that makes the case for greater productivity in the construction industry by shedding light on the huge opportunities that are available—if we know what to look for and where. There is no reason why other industrial plants, Coca-Cola and otherwise, can’t achieve a similar level of results.”

LEED warehouse and distribution center projects balance size and efficiency