City of Charlotte Announces Sustainability Award Winners

Published on November 19, 2025

The City of Charlotte is constantly working to be a global leader in environmental sustainability.

This year, the city’s Office of Sustainability and Resilience (OSR) sponsored the Sustainability Award, a new category within the Charlotte Business Journal’s 2025 Best Places to Work Program.

The Best Places to Work Awards honor employers that go above and beyond to create exceptional workplace cultures, with rankings based on confidential employee surveys that measure team dynamics, trust in leadership, communication and overall satisfaction.

The new sustainability category recognized organizations that exemplified the city’s Strategic Energy Action Plan Plus (SEAP+), Charlotte’s framework for achieving a zero-carbon future.

Nominees for the Sustainability Award included 70 organizations that demonstrated the vital link between sustainability and business success. These businesses showcased how lowering costs, boosting resiliency, and engaging employees contribute to building a more sustainable, equitable, and economically vibrant Charlotte.

Each organization was evaluated on five key criteria: having a published sustainability plan with clear energy efficiency strategies; engaging employees in energy-saving initiatives; investing in clean and renewable technologies such as solar, geothermal, or EV charging; implementing formal energy management systems to monitor and optimize energy use; and actively participating in local initiatives like the City of Charlotte’s Power Down the Crown.

This year’s winners are Spectrum Center, Elford Inc., Optima Engineering, and Novant Health.

We caught up with a few of the winners at the Charlotte Business Journal’s 2025 Best Places to Work Awards ceremony to hear more about winning and what it means to combine sustainability with their businesses.

 

Large Business Winner: Optima Engineering
President: Steven Daley

How does sustainability shape your design approach and client relationships?

So, we jumped on the sustainability bandwagon early at Optima when it was really going on in the west coast in California. The lead, the USGBC (U.S. Green Building Council) kind of brought that forth and us being in construction design, we really jumped on that, and we had the chance to into our office in 2008, we put solar panels on the roof and then a solar water heater and just did a lot of sustainably smart decisions for our office so we could kind of practice what we preached. And then we kind of rolled that into designing net zero facilities and a lot of different fun stuff like that, but sustainability is basically the blood vein of Optima.

How do you measure the success of sustainability initiatives?

Sustainability is all about resource conservation and occupant comfort, and it’s really difficult to do one without the other. I mean, you can put somebody in a bank vault, and you wouldn’t use a lot of energy, but who would want to be there, or…an igloo or something like that would be the opposite side of that. So, you just got to be smart about not going too far on one side or the other, and just making sure it’s a space that you would want to be in. Finding that balance is, to me, the real magic of sustainability.

 

Extra Large Business Winner: Novant Health
Senior VP of Construction and Facility Services : Matthew Stiene

Why is it important to be involved in local energy efficiency initiatives?

So, part of Novant Health’s mission is to improve the health of our communities, and our cause is great, healthier futures. So, we know that as we can reduce our environmental impact through emissions reductions, waste reductions, water use reductions, that we’re helping improve the health of our communities.

What does winning this award mean for your organization?

I think for us it just validates the work we’ve been doing to be a very diligent and pragmatic about how we’re moving forward our sustainability initiatives. So, it’s great to be recognized for the work that we’re doing, that while not having an immediate impact, is very incremental over time and needs to continue for a long time.

 

Small Business Winner: Spectrum Center
Sustainability Program Manager, Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority: Ashley Gladney

Why is it important to be involved in local energy efficiency initiatives?

Spectrum Center wants to be the premier sustainable arena in the Carolinas, and for us we know that we use so many resources to put on our amazing events for our fans that we want to make sure that we’re being responsible in what we’re doing in our building and giving back to the community and being part of Charlotte and the Carolinas as a whole.

What does winning this award mean for the organization?

It’s great to be acknowledged for our work in our sustainability. It’s something we worked very hard on in the five years and coming out of construction is something that we want to highlight even more. So, kicking it off right out of construction to win something like this is a great acknowledgement for our work.

 

The Office of Sustainability and Resilience works to lead Charlotte as a global city by continuously improving, protecting, and preserving the environment, its community, and economy, while ensuring equity and resilience for today’s future generations.

You can read more on the work being done on the Office of Sustainability and Resilience website.