At greenloop 24, blooloop’s online conference on sustainability in visitor attractions, attendees heard from Walt Disney Imagineering, whose ambitious environmental reporting goals were extended to include Scope 3 emissions last year.
The discussion covered a holistic approach to sustainable design, exploring the opportunities for impact at scale across a whole site, adapting to various global regions, and planning for the future with resilient developments.
Disney has participated in every greenloop since it began in 2021, and this year, Emily Dow, executive of the design + delivery studio, and Caitlin Krasovic, sustainable design principal of Walt Disney Imagineering, reflected on the progress they have made over the last four years since making their first greenloop appearance.
“We are super thrilled to be back at greenloop,” says Dow. “It’s been a really interesting way for Caitlin and I to track our progress and the team’s progress, by coming each year and talking about our successes, but our challenges as well.”
A cross-disciplinary approach to sustainability at Disney
Dow began by presenting some of Disney’s latest projects, making the point that it’s only by working together across so many disciplines and industries that it can create truly incredible guest experiences: “It’s that interdisciplinary work. That same idea comes into play when it comes to sustainability here at Disney.
“Whether we’re trying to solve carbon emissions or looking at big ideas on climate resiliency, it’s going to take that same cross-industry collaboration to solve these tough challenges that we know we’re facing in the themed entertainment industry.”
When Dow and Krasovic first presented at greenloop four years ago, Disney was establishing its environmental goals.
“We were trying to get in there with our teams and embed sustainability early on projects,” says Dow. “But this year is exciting for us because many of those first projects we worked on four years ago are ready to open. Those are really showing a true embodiment of our environmental goals while also creating those incredible guest experiences, which is, of course, critical for us.”
Thinking holistically
While the team has had great success over the last few years, it has also had to overcome many challenges. Dow explains that they initially took a project-by-project approach to give the best chance of success, ensuring that sustainability was embedded in each one from the start.
“But now, we’re in the middle of the decade, and we have a lot of projects under our belt – we realise that to make the biggest impact for the company and the world, we need to zoom out and think more holistically.”
“Our focus now is looking at the largest scale that we can, exploring opportunities to think sustainably across the whole site, looking at better adaptations that consider the uniqueness of each of the regions in which we build, and making strong partnerships in those regions to spread our impact, ensuring the strongest connection between our new build and our sustainment efforts with our operations partners, and also planning for the future by ensuring that resiliency is at the heart of our development strategy.”
Disney’s Sustainability and Social Impact Report
Krasovic shared a brief update from the environmental sustainability section of Disney’s latest Sustainability and Social Impact Report. At greenloop 23, the pair spoke about Disney’s Scope 3 emissions strategy development; as The Walt Disney Company was looking to join the Science Based Targets initiative, it needed to report on Scope 1, Scope 2 and Scope 3 emissions.
“We are happy to say that after our data had been submitted and validated by third parties, the Walt Disney Company is officially part of the Science Based Targets initiative. We got that validation from SBTi of our greenhouse gas emission reduction targets last calendar year.”
She also shared a graph released in Disney’s 2023 Sustainability and Social Impact report, which represents the company’s pathway to net zero emissions for direct operations—its Scope 1 and 2 emissions. The graph highlights the STBi targets in parallel with Disney’s goals towards 2030.
“I would suspect that if we all charted out our emissions during the past few years post-Covid, we would see a common downturn driven by lower activity in general. But now, we’ve been getting back into business as usual, so it is nice to see that even the current year shows some positive reductions already taking place.”
See also: PortAventura: beyond carbon neutral to Science Based Targets
Reducing direct emissions
The company is focusing on five levers to reduce its direct operation emissions: designing sustainability, pursuing energy efficiency, using lower-carbon fuels, actively electrifying, and expanding renewable electricity.
“Here at Walt Disney Imagineering, we play a big role in this lever,” explains Krasovic, on the designing sustainably element. “We are striving to design and deliver all of our newly approved projects to near net zero emissions, as we have laid out and shaped in our internal sustainable design standard.”
The company is also continuing to pursue a variety of energy-efficient technologies for both its buildings and its attractions, as well as fuel efficiency measures for its vehicles and cruise ships.
“In addition to being fuel efficient, we’re also exploring lower carbon fuels for our cruise ships, vehicles and mobile generators, and looking at opportunities to actively electrify elements like battery electric generators for our film productions, as well as other ways to continue electrifying with fleet vehicles and all-electric kitchens in our buildings and cruise ships.
Disney also has an expanding portfolio of onsite renewable electricity projects and is pursuing green power programs and direct or virtual power purchase agreements.
“These levers also exemplify holistic thinking, looking at some of those common core strategies that all of the segments of our company can use within our own business units to ensure that we’re charting that path to meet these ambitious goals for 2030.”
The full 2023 Sustainability & Social Impact Report report is available here.
Solar power and electrification at Disney
Krasovic then gave some examples of environmental initiatives at Disney parks worldwide as it works towards its sustainability goals.
“Expanding our renewable energy portfolio worldwide is one of the five key levers that the company is focusing on for 2030, and we have a great example of that with Hong Kong Disneyland. Over the years, Hong Kong Disneyland has implemented several solar projects. The buildings housing our attractions offer a great opportunity to leverage that large roof area for solar energy capture.”
The resort’s latest solar project opened in 2023, making it the city’s single-largest solar site. Shanghai Disney Resort has also expanded its solar capacity, adding another 1.3MW from solar projects in 2023.
“These examples add to the range of large-scale investments in solar power at our other parks and resorts. In Disneyland Paris, we have the solar canopy covering the guest parking lot; in Orlando, we have the Mickey solar array and many other ground solar projects. We’ll continue to research, invest in, and continue developing this area.”
Dow adds: “When we think about emissions and that near net-zero goal, electrification is critical to that goal.
“When Walt and the Imagineers first designed Tomorrowland, they wanted to showcase the incredible innovation and cutting-edge technology that would shepherd the future they saw in their mind. In 1959, Disney’s monorail opened as one of the earliest examples of electrification. It was the only daily operational monorail in the Western Hemisphere for quite some time.”
Now, 65 years later, Disney has announced a significant update to Autopia, one of Disneyland’s opening day attractions, committing to fully electrify it by 2026.
Saving water
Water is another critical issue for many regions where Disney has properties.
“Water is something we talk a lot about, and we’ve remained committed globally to embedding water efficiency measures across our design guidelines and operations,” says Dow. “We’re also disclosing our annual water consumption across our different properties.”
For example, in 2023, Shanghai Disneyland replaced toilet flushing water with non-potable water in two on-stage restrooms. This is saving millions of gallons of potable water per year. We’re looking at this as a prototype that we can employ in other places around the globe.”
“Similarly, Caitlin and I recently worked with the Epcot team at Walt Disney World Resorts on an irrigation system to reclaim water. Plus, the Jungle River Cruise attraction at Hong Kong Disneyland is now refilled with collected rainwater. So, water is a huge area where we’ve tried to push innovation, commitments and reporting this year.”
New buildings and waste
Regarding building more sustainably, Krasovic spoke about the 350 new cabins that will begin to open this summer at Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort for Disney Vacation Club members and guests.
“This location originally opened in 1971 and has been a wonderful way for our guests to relax and celebrate the natural beauty that has made this resort special,” says Krasovic. “Each of these new cabins is a standalone unit, and the project team engaged with a local business to develop a prefabrication strategy to allow for the construction of the components off-site to ensure minimal construction disruption on site while still maintaining that high level of quality.”
This innovative construction process was approached with sustainability in mind:
“Not only does this method save time on the site, but it also helps to minimise the construction and material waste generated in the first place. This modular method is a great example of strategies we can implement to help achieve our company goal of 90% construction waste diversion for our US and European projects.”
Sustainability at Shanghai Disney Resort
Last year, the team shared that Shanghai Disney Resort was awarded the LEED platinum certification under LEED version 4.1 for communities.
“It is the world’s first resort to achieve this high level of certification,” says Dow. “This shows our long-term commitment to sustainability and environmental conservation. I worked on Shanghai Disney for about seven and a half years, and I think it’s a great example of applying sustainable thinking from the early conception of a project.”
“Our research regarding the region, regarding sustainable design, and our story-based thinking on Shanghai Disneyland was really about embedding a systems thinking approach.
“If we look at some highlights, we have an energy distribution centre which leverages heat produced during electricity generation with natural gas. We have central chilled water, hot water, compressed air, and park-wide services. So we’re treating our site most efficiently, using urban planning to find efficiency through the broad system.
“We started with that thinking at day zero. Then, we have ecology and wildlife strategies to bring native birds, insects, and plant species back to the resort. These sustainable strategies, whether it was the water management, the water treatment, the site formation, how we thought about the build-up of the soil, how we thought about the systems, that thinking was in place before we even sketched a line of the idea on the page.
“When trying to make a big impact, that holistic thinking from the start is absolutely critical.”
Disney Lookout Cay and Lighthouse Point
Looking at some projects opening soon, Krasovic discusses sustainability at Disney Lookout Cay at Lighthouse Point, the company’s latest island development.
“That will be opening this summer, paying tribute to the beauty of nature. Nature has given shape to every architectural detail. There are curvy, organic shapes and vibrant colours inspired by the plants and shells from around the island.”
Disney is also partnering with local artists, historians and cultural ambassadors to bring Disney Lookout Cay to life.
“We’ve maintained a strong focus on the environment and local culture throughout the design and construction of this project. For example, we are only developing around 16% of the site, leaving the rest for preservation and the community. We’ve used elevated designs for many walkways and structures to reduce that impact and touch on the natural environment.
“There’s also an innovative open trestle pier that prevented the need for dredging the ship channel. Operationally, they will be doing zero waste and continuing to explore waste-to-energy capture opportunities. 90% of their energy demand will be from renewable sources, and solar and battery storage will be used to help us achieve the near-net zero emissions goal.
“This has been a great example of how we can think holistically about the entire site development and establish the right infrastructure and building systems from the start to ensure that we are well on our way to meeting the company’s 2030 goals and beyond. And we are excited to see this come together.”
Story-led sustainable thinking from the start
Addressing the question of how Disney embeds sustainability early on in its new projects, Dow says:
“We recently announced an Avatar experience for the Disneyland Resort. Just imagine Avatar’s rich and immersive stories and how that’s allowing our teams to think of new and innovative ways to bring these stories to life and celebrate these environments, ecosystems and ecologies.”
“When our teams are starting to conceptualise experiences like Avatar, Caitlin and the team are there early on in the project, working right alongside them, thinking about the broad infrastructure impacts, and talking about the storytelling opportunities. A sustainable design isn’t just about meeting the technical requirements of a goal. It’s also about bringing to life stories of the conservation of our natural world and how guests can impact it in interesting ways.
“At Disney, everything that we do is story-driven. So that’s why it’s essential to treat sustainability and our environmental goals as foundational principles, a lens through which we think through all our projects. With the IP and the stories of Avatar, there’s a natural fit between our environmental goals and the stories and message of that franchise.”
DisneylandForward
Looking ahead, Krasovic references her all-time favourite Walt Disney quote: ‘Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world.’
“I think DisneylandForward is an incredible example of this philosophy. We received approval from the Anaheim City Council on the DisneylandForward multi-year public planning effort to update Disneyland Resort’s existing development approvals, which will allow Disney to meaningfully invest in Anaheim for the decades to come and meet our future demands in entertainment.”
“So, as we’ve shared, a key part of our 2030 environmental goals is designing sustainably across our building portfolio. We aim to embed sustainable design in that capital project review process for these new developments at that earliest phase of design to really get it into that core beginning of the seed of the idea. For example, we’ll evaluate energy efficiency measures and how to employ water stewardship strategies and minimise waste.
“We can only imagine the possibilities ahead with this project. And there are a lot of great projects underway around the world that, as we’re able to, we’re excited to share more about with you in the future.”
As a global company, she adds that Disney recognises that each of its operating regions has unique opportunities and challenges regarding sustainability.
“It is not a one-size-fits-all scenario.”
An international environmental design standard
The Walt Disney Company has announced a great deal of investment in its worldwide portfolio of parks, resorts and cruise ships over the coming decades.
“As we think about this growing menu, some of those key foundational things that we’ve set up in the last four years are making us feel like we already have a strong momentum to begin these projects,” says Dow.
“For instance, we released our internal environmental design standard, where we could zoom out and look across all of our different global sites and all of the jurisdictional requirements at each site. In most regions of the world where we’re building, we’re seeing huge tailwinds regarding the focus on sustainable design.”
“Our environmental design standard takes the best of the best across these different regions. It takes into account our commitments to what we put forth publicly regarding our 2030 environmental goals, including our Scope 3 reductions. It gives that roadmap that starts at day zero of how we can think about setting up the foundation, the infrastructure and the story-based ideas that will bring our environmental goals to life.”
Sustainability at Disney and Scope 3 emissions
Disney has also made several commitments around its Scope 3 reductions:
“One thing that we’re beginning to do as we think about how we take on our Scope 3 reductions holistically is we’re looking across our entire global menu of projects, and we’re looking at employing some interesting, optimised ways of building, constructing and bringing projects to life that take on a lot of ideas of material reductions. We’re bringing in broad strategies that allow us to harness our learnings and power across our global properties.
“We have this opportunity to connect our research and work with some internal and external innovators in these different spaces to ensure that we can begin these projects in a way that meets or exceeds our goal.”
“Then we’ve also been able to take much of what we learned from the projects we’ve done in the past four years; where did we hit the sticky point with the team? Where did we have to make a trade-off between an aesthetic approach versus an environmental approach? We have research and development initiatives that allow us to study how to solve that better the next time.
“When taking on these large-scale projects, we have the opportunity for continuous improvement and the feed-in of the lessons learned from one project to the next. It’s only by working globally, zooming out and thinking holistically that we can meet our goals.
“We’re finding we can meet our goals project by project with our environmental design standard and guidelines for our team, so we can achieve what we’ve set out publicly. But it’s not until you look at it across a broad system of each resort, and then how each resort is connected, that we can really make the scale of change we want to make.”
We’re all in it together
“One thing we’ve learned a lot is that when it comes to sustainability at Disney, we’re all in it together,” she adds. “So, that might be our Imagineering design teams working on day zero or their early blue sky phase. That might be our resort operational partners thinking through our waste sorting strategy, our waste-to-energy strategies, or many of the operational decisions we make every day.
“It’s also our frontline cast members, how they bring to life these goals for our guests and become part of that broader connected journey of our guests, and how they experience sustainability in our parks. It’s our vendors, it’s our partners. So, it’s thanks to all of our commitment and our focus together that we’re able to maximise our impact.”
Diving into some examples of how the teams are achieving this shift, Dow says:
“We’re working hard to connect our long-term master planning development strategies with our environmental commitments to ensure we can set the stage for environmental growth. When we talk about day zero, that’s not day zero of the project. That’s going back to that site’s development strategy. How do we put the proper infrastructure and planning principles in place that allow us to think about growth sustainably?
“We’re also looking for ways to ensure that as we grow our parks, resorts and cruise ships, we can achieve our near net zero commitments. Because as we build, grow, and invest more into our parks, we’re obviously growing our potential for emissions or a carbon impact.”
Zooming out
Looking ahead and thinking about how Disney continues to ensure that its projects can be constructed and operated in a sustainable way to manage the growth of the company’s carbon footprint and its emissions, Dow says:
“We talked a lot about how we’ve learned so much by solving challenges project by project, but we know that is not the path to a truly sustainable future or authentically meeting our goals the way we imagined.
“So we’re zooming out. We’re leveraging systems-based thinking, whether that’s through infrastructure or some of our design standardisation, to think of innovative ways to meet our goals holistically and globally. We’re ensuring the tightest alignment between our corporate goals, our new build projects, and the operations of our site to ensure that we can achieve the strongest results together.”
“What we’re seeing in each of our different global markets is that our partners or jurisdictional officials in those markets often lead the way when it comes to sustainable design. So, we can usually share a lot of knowledge and information when we are conceiving projects. We’ve embedded our Imagineering teams into each of our regional sites to ensure that we are thinking about a project in regional and site-adaptive ways.
“Instead of only designing a project out of our California or Florida teams, we have design Imagineers embedded in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Paris, and Germany. They are there with the mission of not only creating an amazing guest experience but also bringing to life our 2030 environmental goals and our environmental commitments.
“Probably the most important thing we’re looking at is how we build our environments today and ensure the resiliency of our brand and resorts over the next 100 years.”
Why does sustainability matter at Disney?
According to Dow, guests are looking for sustainable purposes within companies but also looking to enjoy their visit in comfort.
“When we think about things like climate resiliency, we see that our regions around the world are facing many changes, whether that’s rising temperatures during the summer, more frequent 100—or even 500-year storm events, inland coastal flooding, and many other climatic conditions that used to be rarer occurrences.
“This has been a significant challenge for our business, but also for our guests when it comes to enjoying their day in our parks.”
“Sustainability is about doing our part to reduce Disney’s environmental impact. But now we’re challenging our teams to think not only about the current impact of projects and the environmental goals but also about the long-term resiliency of our parks, resorts, businesses and regions worldwide.
“We know we’re going to continue to face challenges. Environmental conditions are changing. So that means we have to pivot, and we have to adapt our business so that we’re able to create great parks, resorts, and cruise ships that can continue our amazing guest experience.
“I think this will be something that we all must consider as we think of the resiliency of our themed entertainment industry and our future.”
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