High-performance building standards and goals typically focus on operating energy. But how much energy does it take to build (or retrofit) that high performance building, or operate your company in the first place? We'll try to answer this question by examining the South Mountain Company carbon footprint project and a Byggmeister analysis of the embodied energy of several retrofits. Finally, we'll discuss what we can do about it — what we can change in our business operations and building practices to reduce the footprints of our work.