Month: June 2023

By Shanti Pless, Senior Building Energy Research Engineer, National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Nationwide, it is increasingly difficult for families to find affordable housing opportunities. Once considered an issue isolated to major cities such as New York and San Francisco, the problem has become widespread, with Freddie Mac estimating that the nation is short 3.8 million housing units, a deficit that doubled from 2012 to 2019. As the housing supply struggles to keep up with demand, prices and rents soar.

This shortage is driven by a variety of factors amplified by the pandemic, but also predating it. Income inequality, construction material costs, and complex building development regulations all contribute to the lack of affordable housing options. Housing and construction costs in major cities have hit record highs, including an outrageous example in San Francisco where the cost of a public restroom hit $1.7 million.

Not only is the construction of new buildings expensive, it also carries a large carbon footprint. Annually, building construction accounts for 2.3 GT of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, driven by raw material processing and building operations. Construction also accounts for a significant amount of waste generation, water consumption, and harmful air emissions.

The climate crisis requires immediate, scalable action to reduce GHG emissions. However, if these efforts add to the cost of homes, the affordable housing crisis will further expand. Thus, the U.S. is faced with the paradox of having to lower the cost of buildings while simultaneously reducing their emissions. Furthermore, these homes cannot be built in a way that sacrifices their quality, risking the dignity of their residents.

Recently, modular construction has emerged as a major opportunity to tackle this challenge. Modular construction allows a building to be manufactured off-site in prefabricated sections. These modules are then transported to the project site, where they are assembled in place of conventional construction methods. The resulting benefits include a smaller environmental footprint, shorter construction time, and lower costs.

Modular projects allow for faster development because all aspects of construction do not have to occur in the same location and can thus happen separately, in parallel. These prefabricated components can then be assembled and combined, a much more efficient process. Companies like Pre Framing Corp are able to construct building walls in this manner, a process which they claim allows for development to be expedited by a factor of ten. These various prefabricated solutions can be combined to let the time savings accumulate.

Prefabricated components can also be developed with a reduced carbon footprint in mind. Companies like Blokable are able to cut GHG emissions from multi-family housing development by 60%. They achieve this by fully electrifying the modular components, incorporating energy recovery ventilation, and utilizing energy-efficient design features.

Modular designs are not limited to new building construction; they can convert existing buildings into new residences. Some existing non-residential buildings may simply require the addition of interior features to become habitable. Companies like Kit Switch offer modular kitchens, which can be installed into existing buildings as part of the process of repurposing commercial properties for residential purposes. By avoiding the construction of new buildings, these strategies reduce cost, emissions, and time required.

Prefabricated solutions offer an affordable, sustainable mean of combating the housing crisis, without sacrificing quality. Future residents should not expect to live in substandard conditions. As we aggressively look to meet our housing challenges, we must keep in mind that families will be calling these buildings home, and we must ensure they’re as good, if not better, than other, traditional options. And with the excellent technologies and strategies emerging today, this is becoming an exciting reality.

CNH Industrial’s Biking New Ground series is underway for 2023. It sees the company promoting cycling as a form of sustainable mobility. In this year’s edition, CNH Industrial participated in Italy’s Giro-E, an amateur cycling competition that follows the route of the Giro D’Italia, the country’s iconic professional road cycling race.

Significantly, the Giro-E is raced on electric bikes. Therefore, Biking New Ground is a way for CNH Industrial to affirm the importance of sustainable mobility, physical activity, environmental care and social inclusion.

The CNH Industrial team was captained by Violette Neza – one of road cycling’s rising stars. A Rwandan rider, she is a member of ‘Team Africa Rising’ – an organization supporting the development of cycling across the continent. Last year’s captain, Paola Gianotti, returned to the team as ambassador. Paola is an Italian ultra-cyclist, who holds four Guinness World Records. Alongside them were a hundred other team members, including employees, dealers and customers. The cyclists rode along winding roads, stunning coastlines and awe-inspiring mountains, battling a range of weather conditions.

Prior to the race, Violette commented: “The team is the most valuable resource we can count on, especially in times of difficulty. I am happy to be the captain! I hope to guide them whilst sharing experiences and learning from each other. And I hope to give my team the inspiration to keep working towards a more sustainable future.”

The Giro-E ended recently in Rome. But the Biking New Ground series will continue across the next few months, concluding after European Mobility Week in September.

At Applied Materials, we are committed to upholding a culture and an environment where everyone can safely speak, be fully heard and is part of a workplace community that leverages and appreciates differences. 

Over the past several years, we have been making progress toward our goals of increasing the number of women and underrepresented minorities in our workforce and our efforts in this area continue to evolve. Recently, we introduced the Applied community to the DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) Engine, a framework of tools, learning and processes to accelerate our culture of inclusion strategy. The first pillar of that strategy is engaging leaders as champions of change. 

“We have a strong culture of innovation built on collaboration, speed and hard work,” said Michelle Mapp Cooper, vice president, culture of inclusion at Applied. “And much like our technology continues to evolve, so does our culture. Our leaders play an important role in creating – and modeling – a more inclusive culture at Applied. That’s why we focus on personalizing inclusion for our leaders.”  

Champions of Change
Since its launch to the Applied leadership group, which includes managing directors and vice presidents globally, we have expanded our DEI Engine and doubled down on our commitment to engage leaders as champions of change.

Michelle Mapp Cooper and chief human resources officer Susan Winchester recently led a “Celebrating and Strengthening our Culture” session that introduced the DEI Engine and featured a panel of leaders from Applied’s Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) who shared their personal experiences, recent ERG accomplishments and their plans for the year.

“There was visible energy in the room as so many leaders wanted to know how they could be more inclusive and get involved or support our ERGs,” said Michelle.  

Coaching for Inclusion
In addition, during the past 18 months, Applied has provided more than 170 of our executive leaders with a tailored coaching for inclusion program, which focused on making inclusion personal for leaders – helping them to understand how DEI issues affect them, their teams and the organization.  

The most recent cohort of 40 Applied leaders graduated in April and included Prabu Raja, president of Applied’s Semiconductor Products Group and Tim Deane, group vice president of Applied Global Services – who both led teams through the program. 

“The program is a transformational experience for our Applied team,” said Tim Deane. “It will change the way we operate and interact well into the future.”

That sentiment was echoed by many of the other leaders who participated. 

“This program provided a wonderful opportunity for self-reflection to understand how events in one’s life shapes who we are, and how we can create a positive impact as a leader in the company,” said Derek Witty, vice president, Semiconductor Products Group. “Inclusion is about connecting with one another on a personal level, listening to hear and understanding how to empower others to succeed.”

 “It was a fantastic and engaging class, filled with honesty and appreciation for the paths that others have walked on their inclusion journey,” said Rory Campbell, managing director, Joint Operations Leadership Team. “I very much look forward to using the skills with my team.”

This blog post is one in a series that will focus on Applied’s culture of inclusion. The next post will follow the release of Applied’s forthcoming 2022 sustainability report and will spotlight our 2030 DEI goals and what we’re doing to get there. To learn more about Applied’s commitment to a culture of inclusion, visit our Corporate Responsibility webpage.