EDITOR’S COMMENT I haven’t quite got through all 3,949 pages of the IPCC’s latest report on climate change, but I have read enough to feel frightened, sad, angry and overwhelmed.
The planet is doomed, and it is all our fault. The report uses the terms “human caused”, “human activities” and “human influence” more than 600 times. It uses “real estate”, “property” or “buildings” just 43 times.
We know that buildings contribute 40% of carbon emissions and we know that there is a huge amount of pressure on property owners and developers to make their buildings more environmentally friendly. I am all for that. You’ll know that having read, many a time, our articles on how the industry must act on best practice and the changes to legislation that will force a shift to greener building.
But reading this report, I’m wondering whether we are putting the pressure in the right place. Yes, buildings are developed and used because of human activities, but the damage being done to the world is not being done by passive buildings. It is being done by you and I. It is being done by the way we use buildings and by how lazy we are – think lifts, think using cars, trains and buses instead of walking, cycling, etc, think not turning off your computer (guilty) or the lights, think using the dishwasher instead of washing up, buying a coffee in a takeaway cup (guilty – one is sat on my desk as I type this). I could go on.
This industry can develop the greenest of buildings (and it is), it can work out solutions to retrofit old buildings and deal with the very real problem of embodied carbon, it can think about its supply chain, it can work on switching to renewable energy, it could be – and is in some cases – generating its own renewable energy.
The industry can do a lot. It could invest a lot more in R&D (remember Fifth Wall’s Brendan Wallace laying the challenge down to the industry after discovering that, in the US at least, just $94m had been invested into the R&D to mitigate climate change by the real estate sector over the past decade?) a move that would probably help it to offset less than it is currently planning for.
It can also be legislated for. And legislation would bring some much-needed clarity. Government-mandated measurements, a formally set carbon price, tax reliefs, etc would help bring about more action from the industry. But none of it makes a dent if we, the end users, the humans, the true villains in this climate change challenge, don’t stop what we are doing.
Let’s not fly to space because we’re a billionaire and we can (not guilty), let’s not leave our laptops on overnight, let’s not take the lift if we can take the stairs. Let’s not drive everywhere. Let’s stop and think about the impact we can have.
ESG is talked about so much in the corporate world today. Real estate is taking it very, very seriously. It is time for we as individuals to do so too.
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