How can AI help real estate professionals decarbonise?

An AI-powered platform recommends quick wins for carbon-reducing retrofits and provides ROI predictions

Spotted: The UN Environment Programme reports that “Nearly 40 per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions come from the real estate sector. Of these emissions, approximately 70 per cent are produced by building operations, while the remaining 30 per cent comes from construction.” While the climate impact of buildings is clear, for managers of large portfolios of commercial real estate, it can be difficult to build a complete and accurate picture of the sustainability of every building. 

Enter Cambio, a commercial real estate decarbonisation platform built by and for real estate professionals. The startup brings together climate and data scientists and retrofit and regulatory experts to provide portfolio and building managers with deep insight into building and equipment performance. 

Armed with an understanding of the sustainability changes that could make the quickest and largest reductions to a building’s emissions, portfolio managers can ensure compliance with regulations and drive progress towards net-zero goals. Cambio’s system integrates directly with every metre on a property, providing a livestream of energy use and emissions intensity.  

Additionally, the system works seamlessly with utility providers’ APIs, making it possible for portfolios of mixed ownership to monitor all properties in the same way. The platform uses artificial intelligence to analyse potential returns on investment for a range of retrofitting options, before ranking the properties based on the level of opportunity for carbon reductions.

As well as flagging compliance with regulatory policies, Cambio also automates reporting. This makes it possible for owners and managers of large portfolios to see total emissions at-a-glance, as well as those for individual buildings. They can then track interventions over time to evaluate their efficacy.  

The complexity of real estate decarbonisation management is reflected in the numbers of AI-powered solutions being created by innovators. Springwise’s archive includes projects that use blockchain to track buildings’ carbon emissions and AI recommended carbon transition plans.  

Written By: Keely Khoury