New Carbon Retrofit Calculator Helps Make Sense of the Difficult Building Decarbonization Decision

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Propmodo Technology

By Franco Faraudo · September 25, 2024

Greetings,

This week, Propmodo Technology is diving into energy management with the support of our friends at Parity. Learn how to save 20-30% on your building’s utility costs, guaranteed. Today’s newsletter explores a new building decarbonization tool developed by Schneider Electric, in collaboration with JLL and C.Scale, designed to help real estate owners estimate the costs and carbon impacts of energy retrofits.

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New Carbon Retrofit Calculator Helps Make Sense of the Difficult Building Decarbonization Decision

What to do with an aging building? That is the question real estate owners around the world have been asking themselves for a while. Faced with growing energy costs, carbon-conscious tenants, and the growing threat of fines, older commercial buildings are in dire need of energy retrofits. But what retrofits to pursue and what the carbon impact of those retrofits will be is a difficult calculation. To help make the decision a little easier, a new public tool has been created by Schneider Electric in partnership with JLL and carbon estimation tool C.Scale that will help owners quickly estimate the costs and impacts of their upgrades.

The building decarbonization calculator is currently in Beta and is scheduled to be rolled out to the public by the end of the year. “We realized how important this tool would be from some research we did recently where we calculated that 50 percent of the buildings we use today will still be here in 2050, which is when most of the world uses for their carbon zero targets,” said Mike Kazmierczak, Global Vice President of Digital Energy for Schneider Electric.

The tool uses general information about a building to estimate what the energy use and carbon consumption would be and then applies the average energy savings that different types of upgrades provide on average. “We group buildings into different vintages so we can use the building codes at the time to provide some context for what kind materials and technologies the building has,” Kazmierczak said. The model can be refined based on more detailed information about the building, but its quick, effective way of calculating things like cost to CO2 reduction and payback period for different upgrade options can provide a launching point for further investigation.

Schiener made the announcement during New York Climate Week, and New York City’s very own Local Law 97 is included in the calculator. One of the takeaways from Kazmierczak’s demo of the program was how light and medium upgrades would often get buildings into compliance with current regulations but would often fall short when they become more stringent. “By taking the long view to 2050, some building owners are going to realize that they are going to have to do large retrofits eventually, so it can make sense to just do them now rather than do them twice,” Kazmierczak said.

More tools are popping up that can help building owners understand the best path to decarbonization. These tools will become even more valuable when things like embodied carbon and Scope 3 emissions get folded into the calculation. Older buildings have a long journey to where they need to be by 2050; now, they will have a bit better roadmap to help them get there.

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Propmodo Technology is edited by Franco Faraudo with contributions from readers like you and the Propmodo team.

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