Antwerp – PropTech firm Spacewell, a leader in the digital transformation of building management & operations, has released a white paper on the energy challenge in commercial real estate (CRE). The paper, which is co-authored with Dexma Energy Intelligence, examines the role of the built environment in the energy transition against the background of the climate emergency, the energy crisis, ESG pressures, and recent evolutions that are transforming the world of commercial real estate.
CRE is critical in the energy transition
Energy transition investments have so far been mainly focused on renewable energy, energy storage, and electrified transport. Real estate, which is a fragmented world with a lot of loosely connected stakeholders, has been a bit on the periphery of the energy turnaround. However, given the long lifecycle of buildings and their significant contribution to global warming, the real estate sector has a critical role to play in the energy transition. Against this background, CREs are looking to integrate cost-effective digital solutions that will reduce their organization’s carbon footprint while ensuring a high ROI.
“Winston Churchill famously said: ‘Never let a good crisis go to waste.’ As the energy crisis sets in, it creates an incredible opportunity for real estate owners, investors, managers, tenants, and users, to accelerate and disrupt the future,“ says Nicholas White, Founder Smart Building Collective. “We can focus on low-hanging fruit by better managing occupancy, natural light, LED lighting, and controlling CO2. But now is the time to think about significant impact. In this crisis, larger ‘smart’ investments can make or break the value case for our real estate (i.e.: demand response, national grid alignment, battery and solar systems, and sophisticated energy management systems) and could literally and figuratively keep us above water. We need to think holistically, start with the basics, start small if needed, but we have to do something, so let’s do something big!”
“Climate change is the defining issue of our time,” says Ulrike Beringer, Director of Corporate Communications & Sustainability, at Nemetschek Group. “The built environment, as we know, is one of the largest contributors to carbon emissions that cause global warming. For Nemetschek Group, digitalization is the answer to fight climate change and we are motivated to accelerate the decarbonization of real estate through eliminating inefficiencies and waste.”
(Note: this white paper on the energy challenge in real estate is also be published in French, Spanish, German, Dutch, and Swedish)
