Ground Zero and Beyond: Building a Zero Emissions Future With the Fierce Urgency of Now
I recently had the privilege of speaking to global sustainability and business leaders at the Sustainability 2100 conference. During my keynote address, Ground Zero and Beyond: Building a Zero Emissions Future With the Fierce Urgency of Now, I spoke to audience members about greening our existing buildings and providing them with a roadmap to net zero and gave the audience a preview of the work GNFZ will be doing in 2023 to help existing buildings get started.
When it comes to carbon output, the built environment is the highest emitting sector — making up almost 40% of the planet’s emissions. And with existing buildings representing 97-98% of the overall real estate market, we simply cannot get to zero if we can’t provide solutions for this market’s growing global footprint. By empowering people to assess their building’s baseline at the onset, a net zero solution will help the sector better understand the role its assets play in getting the global market to net zero.
In 2023, GNFZ’s primary charge will be focusing on the existing buildings sector and we will be rolling out a solution to help organizations more accurately track their scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions.
We must green our existing buildings
Buildings that are more energy-efficient (i.e., via district heating, building energy management systems, insulated windows, etc.) are cheaper to operate. Buildings that provide their users with healthier, more engaging experiences (i.e., via green roofs, green leasing, etc.) have stronger tenant retention rates. And buildings that are more technologically advanced (i.e., via electrification, building-to-grid integration, on-site renewable generation and storage capacity, etc.) are not only capable of more resilient performance, but are also better able to cultivate and sustain lucrative new revenue streams independent of rents, all while affording end-users an improved experience.
Yet, while the literature and lived experiences to support the business and even moral cases for existing building decarbonization may be unassailable, the challenge of getting the market to appreciate them, let alone act upon them, remains intact.
This is the impetus behind the first phase of the Global Network for Zero’s work: to unify net zero and, by extension, living standards for the existing buildings sector once and for all. Over time, there will be consensus over the singular importance of the carbon emissions metric for existing buildings; reduced emissions beget ROI, beget competition, beget improved outcomes for all stakeholders in the existing buildings sector.
There’s value to be cultivated from a diverse set of ultimate, sector-specific standards for not only what constitutes net zero emissions, but what constitutes net zero best practices, including acceptable use of carbon offsets. Stakeholders of the buildings sector (and others) will tell you they need these guardrails and goalposts before they undertake action. But we know they’ll need more; GNFZ is endeavoring to standardize the metrics needed to evaluate both the aggregate and cumulative ROI of net zero implementation to all stakeholders in the existing buildings sector.
Once these guardrails and metrics have been established, promulgated and adopted, then we’ll see the laggard existing building sector initiate real, self-reinforcing progress. And with continued refinement of these standards and best practices, ideally, we’ll see this sector make up for lost time and become the critical foundation of the more sustainable, truly climate-aligned society it’s destined to be.
The next steps forward
If you are interested in engaging with us and have a project you want to walk through this project or discuss for net zero implementation, are interested in sharing a net zero ROI story with our network, want to join our advisory board and provide feedback on our solutions, or have a desire to share your net zero implementation best practices and methodologies with other partners in an effort to scale this work, please get in touch with us at [email protected].