Originally published by Morgan Maloney on December 15, 2023 for UrbanLand Magazine.

The global real estate industry continues to progress toward net zero despite an uncertain economic environment. Government regulations, investor and tenant demands, new sources of capital and financial incentives, and physical and transitional climate risks are strengthening the business case and building global momentum on climate action.

In 2022, the ULI Greenprint Community grew to more than 125 real estate companies, representing more than 16,500 assets with more than $2 trillion in real estate assets under management. Each year since 2009, ULI Greenprint members have reported their asset-level operational energy, water, waste, and carbon performance data to be included in the State of Green report. For the first time this year, ULI Greenprint piloted the voluntary submission of embodied carbon data from recent development projects to State of Green, Volume 14. This data is an important step in encouraging real estate to measure and reduce its embodied carbon emissions as the industry progresses toward net zero. 

 As Brian Swett, principal, Americas East leader with Arup and ULI’s Randall Lewis Center for Sustainability in Real Estate board chair put it, “As this past year’s seemingly endless onslaught of … unprecedented climate change–driven extreme weather events becomes appreciated as our new normal, the imperative of delivering a net carbon neutral built environment as quickly as possible is abundantly clear. Even in these unusual economic markets impacting numerous real estate sectors, the time for delivering dramatic carbon emissions reductions is now, as we have no time to delay.”