The profitability of going green

The building industry is, by all signs, in the midst of a green revolution. Almost 90% of commercial real estate professionals already view green buildings as a code requirement, according to a recent survey by the STO Building Group.

A movement towards green buildings

In a recent survey by Dodge Data & Analytics, nearly half of industry professionals said that they planned to make 60% or more of their projects green by 2021. The fact that the share of respondents willing to go majority green jumped from a quarter to about half in just three years shows how much progress the “Go Green” movement has made across all sectors of the building industry.

Financial return on green investments

It is therefore no surprise that commercial benefits in the first year of a green building included an 8% savings in operating costs and a 7% increase in building asset values. The financial benefits for portfolio managers to go green are well documented and manifold.

Recent years have seen investment in sustainable assets grow by 17% per year, and experts expect them to surpass $40 billion within the next year or two.

Portfolios need digitization

Clearly, there is room for improvement. Buildings are currently responsible for around 39% of global energy-related carbon emissions, with about three-fourths linked to operational emissions from the day-to-day activities of a building.

To determine what sort of investments might be required, portfolio managers need in-depth insights into their buildings and their investment potential. To that end, buildings require a single digital platform that unifies all of the more than 50 rating systems currently used to evaluate sustainability in real estate.

To achieve a full overview on a building’s green investment potential, every bit of data trapped in the physics of a building needs to be unlocked and analyzed to the fullest extent.

Sustainability requires digitization

Just recently we held a webinar about “Sustainability and Digitization.” The speakers, Jens Müller, CEO of BuildingMinds, and Roger Baumann, COO of Zurich Insurance Company, gave around 80 industry professionals in-depth insights on the topic.