Hello from Greenbuild! Tackling Building and Transportation Emissions
September 26, 2023
I just arrived in Washington D.C. on the Acela train from Boston for the US Green Building Council’s Greenbuild International Conference & Expo, representing ActiveScore. I’m excited to have conversations with sustainability professionals that are tackling one of the top 2 largest carbon emitting sectors in the US - real estate - which includes the energy that buildings use, as 30% of all emissions, according to the EPA. The other sector in the top 2 is transportation emissions, on par at 29%.
Breakthrough Energy defines the categories of emissions in an easy to digest way as ”The Five Grand Challenges of Climate Change - How We Plug In, Make Things, Grow Things, Get Around, and Keep Cool and Stay Warm.” We need to tackle all 5 simultaneously, and not in silos, and Transportation and Buildings account for a majority of US emissions.
However, the reality is that transportation accounts for a significantly higher percentage of overall emissions, as compared to virtually everywhere else in the world (in the US it's 29% versus 17% worldwide), and the emissions reduction rate is the slowest of all categories. Now it has been argued that transportation is the most complex and challenging of the sectors to reduce emissions in, but it really comes down to how we move - and driving cars, especially gas powered cars out of convenience is contributing to this variance.
In my previous post on September 12th, I wrote about building certifications for the real estate sector, with focus on how the location of a building and its mobility related amenities and facilities can have an outsized impact on both human and planetary health. This topic has been given very little attention though, even in sustainability circles. Yes, how people get to and from a building are indirect, Scope 3 emissions and yes, it is the responsibility of a commercial or multifamily building owner and landlord to factor these emissions into their carbon accounting and disclosures. We need to get people working on the same problem from various, mutually supporting angles.
In June I attended a Bisnow Sustainability event in Boston, and when panelists discussed ways to make improvements to a building’s carbon footprint, the only thing mentioned in regards to how people get to and from a building was the installation of EV chargers. EV charger installation is helpful in transitioning away from fossil fuels, but a strategy that is more sustainable and can improve tenant health and wellness is active travel, bicycling, or micromobility, and of course better land use planning and transit-oriented development.
Especially for buildings in dense, urban environments, micromobility charging in a secure room should be a must-have amenity. E-bike and e-scooter usage has grown exponentially in the last couple years, which has led to growing pains. Instead of banning e-scooters or e-bikes from a building, a more proactive solution is creating a dedicated space for safe charging of e-bikes and e-scooters. Removing car parking spaces for e-bike and e-scooter charging optimizes space and can save money in new developments and redevelopments.
I’ve attended real estate industry events and have read countless articles and reports on the subject of decarbonizing our real estate sector, and there are varied and sometimes conflicting statistics on how much the real estate sector or “buildings” contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, and how much the transportation sector emits.
Here’s a sampling of the varying percentages:
Carbon Free Boston Buildings touts that “nearly 99% of Boston’s carbon emissions” comes from both buildings and transportation.
New York City: transportation accounts for 25.4% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (Inventory of NYC GHG Emissions, 2020).
Massachusetts: “Transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in Massachusetts, responsible for 37 percent, and most of the damage comes from personal cars.”
Real estate company, Jones Lang Lasalle (JLL) reports in their marketing materials that “real estate accounts for nearly 40% of total CO2 emissions.”
Looking overseas in Brussels, 60% of emissions have been reported as resulting from a building’s transportation footprint, and 40% is the building itself (Source: Urbanite Advisors)
There can be an inherent bias in the percentages, depending on the interests of whomever is sharing that percentage. Ultimately, these are categories that humans have created to better organize them and compartmentalize them, though in reality, most of the categories bleed into each other, are interconnected, and shouldn’t be in siloes, the way they’ve historically been. We’re now at a maturity level in the market of reducing emissions in buildings, so we need to take a longer look at our indirect emissions, classified as Scope 3 emissions.
A truly sustainable built environment requires a holistic view in cutting emissions, including changing how we move. At ActiveScore, we hope to bring more attention to this growing topic, and work with real estate companies, architects, and sustainability consultants to prioritize active transportation infrastructure and services.
