We recently attended the US Green Building Council’s annual Greenbuild conference and like many corridors of the sustainability world right now, uncertainty took over as the unofficial theme. As a sustainability professional working in the built environment, I cannot predict the future. But there are several things I feel sure of going into 2025.
What's certain
First, energy efficiency is and will remain a common-sense measure to improve building performance and reduce operating costs. This is because tenants don’t want to pay more for their energy than they have to, and because owners don’t want to pay a premium to maintain old, sputtering equipment. Looking at sustainability from a cost savings lens will make it possible for the department to continue providing value and delivering results, regardless of federal policy initiatives.
Second, local and decentralized energy is increasingly good business from both security and resiliency perspectives. There are still solid financial reasons too, those aren’t going away, but business continuity is an equally motivating factor for renewable and sustainable energy investments. As the need for power increases across the board, decentralized energy, microgrids and on-site generation become important ways to de-risk operations.
Third, in times of federal uncertainty, local jurisdictions step up. States like Colorado are still announcing powerful building performance standards. Other cities and states, including Philadelphia, Illinois and Minnesota have introduced bills to do the same. We see no signs of local governments pulling back from these already-in-progress efforts. Cities, municipalities and states are considering their regional grids and looking to reduce the strain, understanding that it’s on them to become more energy stable by improving the performance of existing buildings and regulating the construction of new building stock. This may look more like measurement than prescription to start, but the emphasis on data collection is good for sustainability teams too.
What’s to come
It’s true that some executive orders are very likely to be canceled quickly in 2025 and the federal building performance standard will almost certainly be revoked. But sustainability has always been a balancing act. While the Inflation Reduction Act has many widely popular components making a full repeal unlikely, an all-electric-everything in the immediate term was never really on the table.
We can rest assured that investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency aren’t going away as even traditional opponents from oil and gas corporations are publicly voicing their support for these initiatives. Investors too take a global view; the increasing requirements in Europe and other countries will continue to spur sustainability innovations across the world.
The words we use to describe the work that we do may change, but the momentum to decarbonize is real and it will continue.
