Our mission with Global Carbon ESG has always been using technology to help leave the world in a better condition than how we found it.
It has been quite a journey trying to find our way in this entrepreneurship adventure; from integrating IoT and blockchain to track carbon emissions for the Oil and Gas industry, to map the built environment’s energy consumption with just a couple of clicks.
YC founder Paul Graham always says “build something people want”, I’d add also “build something the world needs”.
Today we are in a race against a running clock in order to mitigate the effects of climate change. A lot of things are still basically in the works. The more solutions are available to address this huge problem the better.
Over the last 3 months we have been collecting data by creating surveys, investigating on the web, and talking to potential partners, consultants, and clients. We know that there is still a lot of work to be done, nevertheless, here are some of our findings so far:
· 40% of annual global carbon emissions (approximately 14,000 million metric tons) come from the Real Estate Industry. 70% of these emissions come from the operations of the assets (energy consumption).
· The Real Estate industry not only has strong commitments to decarbonizing its operations but is taking real action in making things happen. Main activities being done:
o Implementation of renewable energy(such as solar roofing), calculating annual carbon emissions from their portfolio assets, and purchasing IRECS (International Renewable Energy Certificates).
· We have had the opportunity of having meetings with professionals across a wide variety of verticals such as: Industrial Facilities, Commercial Real Estate, Office, Retail, Mixed Use, Residential, Affordable Housing, and Multifamily. Of all of these verticals, the most advanced regarding technology implementation to manage energy efficiency (so far, and according to the data we have collected) is Commercial Real Estate. Having strong commitments with their stakeholders, owning utility accounts, and having corporate venture arms has made this vertical the most prepared so far.
· The most unattended market on the other hand is Multifamily Real Estate. Most of the time, property managers only control and have access to common areas’ energy usage. North East US is where the most ambitious commitments of maximizing real Estate energy efficiency are, and local laws and regulations (such as local law 97 in NY) state that companies need to track and report overall building energy consumption (including individual meter data).
· Tracking tenant utility data and reporting energy consumption can be a daunting task, especially as the portfolio size grows. Out of all of the companies in the space we have talked to, 84.73% of them are not able to still retrieve this type of data from their tenants.
o What are they doing so far?
§ Integrating green lease language in their contracts.
§ Searching for technology that helps them automate the process of data collection and carbon accounting. We built some free tools so you can play around and estimate what would be your operational costs of having people collecting daily and scraping invoices, and making energy and ESG reports. (realestatecarboncalculator.com)
§ Still making estimations with available data as it relieves their short-term pain points while they figure out what technology and processes to integrate into their operations.
Global Carbon ESG doesn't want to just collect data and generate reports, but to organize energy consumption data independently to the utility provider, state, or country. At the end of the day what gets measured gets managed. Helping our mission will not only help the world make better and smarter data-driven decisions but will help you maximize your energy efficiency and reduce your energy bill.
Hope you find it useful.
Global Carbon ESG team.
