Real estate is facing a climate crisis, but there might be a way through - TechCrunch
Real estate is facing a climate crisis | TechCrunch
We are heading toward climate disaster, and experts predict that by 2030, the effects will be irreversible. The built environment — building, using and dismantling buildings — have a huge impact on climate change. In fact, the International Energy Agency estimates that real estate is responsible for around 38% of total global carbon dioxide, and 36% of total global energy consumption.
TechCrunch+ caught up with Antony Slumbers — the man behind the Trillion Dollar Hashtag— to learn more about what challenges are facing real estate and whether there’s hope. Spoiler alert: There is hope, but we’ll need to act sooner rather than later.
Slumbers told me that there are four major challenges to real estate:
Decarbonizing it Adapting to the impact of the move to hybrid, distributed and remote working What to do with a surplus obsolete buildings Figuring out how to navigate the societal challenge of the three points above
“This really is not an easy problem to solve,” Slumbers said. But there also might be huge potential here: “When you’re talking about the largest asset class in the world, and a fixed timetable, you have the single largest opportunity space in the world, and huge boom time for prop tech.”
Related Knowledge Center: Climate economics
Climate change is now a driver of the world’s economy. The impact is profound:
- Catastrophic weather events — hurricanes, floods, droughts, high temperatures — are more frequent and more extreme. The cost can be measured in both the initial damage caused and the longer-term impact on the economy.
- Vulnerable communities are increasing climate-related investments, hardening infrastructure and taking other protective measures.
- Investment in carbon capture and storage technologies is increasingly rapidly.
- Governments are making investments and crafting regulations to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
On top of all of this is the cost of uncertainty. As the Fourth National Climate Assessment, released in 2018 by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, says, “The assumption that current and future climate conditions will resemble the recent past is no longer valid.”