Pioneering partnership between Crozier and Thornton Tomasetti

We caught up with James Hendy, SVP & GM Crozier and our lead partners Emily Kunkel and Pawel Woelke from Thornton Tomasetti to dig into this new partnership and their ambitious plans to decarbonize the art world.

Emily, let’s start with you, who is Thornton Tomasetti?

We’re a global consulting firm that works across a variety of sectors to support decarbonization and sustainability initiatives. For example, we’re working with Fortune 100 datacenter hyperscalers to decarbonize their building materials, power plants and utilities to decarbonize electric supply, and large-scale port infrastructure like Port Authority New York & New Jersey to electrify their operations. We use our background in a variety of sectors to take a step back and really focus on where the energy is coming and going within a project. This helps us and our clients prioritize where to have the biggest impact.

James, why did you decide to invest in partnering with an independent consultancy to help Crozier become greener?

I could see we were making progress by electrifying our fleet and utilizing green energy across our sites, but I also knew we didn’t have all the answers. Crozier’s parent company Iron Mountain have committed to reaching net zero by 2040 which is great, and we are proud of metrics like 82% green energy across our sites globally, but as someone who returned to the art industry after a seven year gap working in tech, I was surprised at how little had changed in terms of how the art world operates. I felt that enlisting the help of a dedicated team of decarbonization experts would help us take a holistic view of how we and our clients can transition into a more environmentally sustainable model.

Pawel, Thornton Tomasetti has been working in decarbonization for 20 years. What are some of your observations and what has surprised you about the art world?

One thing that was surprising to us when we first started discussions with subject matter experts at Crozier and within the broader fine arts industry was hearing how the storage conditions were established in the WWII era and remain mostly untouched since then, even with access to wider data collection and condition monitoring – we understand BIZOT is a key initiative to try to change this.

What was more widely known already is the impact of transportation on the overall carbon intensity of art projects. While it is part of most people’s general awareness, it doesn’t always get a lot of attention, since long-haul transit is conducted by 3rd parties and not collected by everyone. So, while it is known to be a hot spot, not everyone is truly aware of how big the impact is – for us, we’re looking at 3rd party transit being approximately 40% of our total emissions. Looking further into how impactful it is, we uncovered that you could cancel out a lot of good in reusing crates in some instances. If your goal is to reuse crates that need to go between adjacent regions and you’re shipping back empty crates, that could potentially undo some of the key carbon savings you get in reusing those materials later. Transporting empty crates between New York, DC, and the Midwest just to reuse the stock can void the 50% savings in emissions you could achieve with reusable crates; whereas focusing on reusable crates for shuttling specific types of artwork from say Miami to LA over and over, this optimizes the crate use and transportation at the same time. It becomes very data driven to find the sweet spot. That’s why we’re building a tool to help see those emissions in real-time to make decisions on the project-specific scale rather than on a general scale.

So, what are you developing?

Emily: We are building a tool that can thread together project specific insights, from transportation, building storage energy use, and crate materials. The purpose is to equip clients with this information at the proposal level to estimate what the carbon impact will be. If the project proposal has a few options to consider, each of those will have a carbon intensity estimated to provide additional awareness to drive decisions based on carbon, in addition to cost and schedule. For instance, if we have two approaches to delivering artwork, one could be a fast delivery schedule. We’d likely have to use diesel trucks that are more readily available, and we could send an exclusive truck. Alternatively, if we look at waiting for a shuttle and consolidate in that region, we can measure the fuel that is being saved. The fuel savings will be directly shown in the carbon estimate. Crozier has an extensive, integrated transportation shuttle network, ideal for route optimization based on volume, carbon, cost, and timings. The ability to consolidate artworks presents a huge advantage for carbon reduction.

Pawel: We spent time discussing the challenges with internal and external subject matter experts, so we are thankful to the partners who supported our exploration phase to see what actually is needed to move forward. Our first order of action is to finish building out the tool, which uses Crozier-specific information for transport fleet, storage facilities, and crating materials. The goal in 2026 is to start delivering proposals to clients that not only have cost and schedule as part of their decision-making process, but also a snapshot of carbon accounting. This will help Crozier to recommend more sustainable solutions and empower clients to make sustainability minded decisions based on the information at their fingertips.

James: Having a consistent view across our entire client base and at all levels is going to help us and our clients make more informed decisions moving forward. With the challenges of the art industry spanning across other sectors, we want to help be a key driver of change.

Reference docs

Future of art and sustainability panel discussion at Crozier’s Tower Bridge facility, London, November 2025

Building a greener art world at Independent Art Fair, September 2025

Contributors

As co-leader of Thornton Tomasetti’s Applied Science practice, Pawel Woelke heads Thornton Tomasetti’s decarbonization and industrial R&D efforts, which involve tackling the most challenging engineering problems in transportation and other industries. With a strong background in computational mechanics as well as expertise in material mechanics, he provides unique insights into the carbon impacts of materials we build with. Pawel tackles challenges using a risk-based approach, ensuring energy resilience and safety are maintained throughout the energy transition - including electrification of projects and support with batteries.

Emily Kunkel is a specialist in decarbonization strategies, with a focus on the energy and industrial sectors since 2015. Her background in process engineering is used to evaluate emerging technologies to support innovation in the energy transition. Her expertise started within the energy sector, focused on decarbonization of power generation facilities. At Thornton Tomasetti she leads a team of multi-disciplinary engineers in finding holistic and alternative decarbonization pathways both for energy use in buildings and campuses as well as reducing the embodied carbon of building materials.