How AI is Making Smart Buildings Greener, More Sustainable
Advances in digital systems are making it possible to build and retrofit office buildings, datacenters, factories, and hotels to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and support maximum sustainability.
![bright green building stands out amid a collection of plain tan buildings bright green building stands out amid a collection of plain tan buildings](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt69509c9116440be8/blt5801c93d54419992/64bf64b60e115d674e5e2638/greenbuilding.jpg?width=1280&auto=webp&quality=95&format=jpg&disable=upscale)
As CIOs and other executives look for ways to expand sustainability initiatives, there’s a growing awareness that initiatives can’t stop at the four walls of the data center or office building. Today’s structures can contain hundreds of thousands of components that consume energy and add to an organization’s carbon footprint.
In fact, buildings consume one-third of all energy globally and produce one-quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs), according to The World Resources Institute. What’s more, business and IT leaders are often narrowly focused on improving sustainability in data centers and procuring greener computing systems. Yet they overlook critical ways that technology can shrink a carbon footprint.
“There is a growing awareness that buildings and workspaces are a crucial part of sustainability initiatives,” states Bryon Carlock, National Real Estate Practice Leader for consulting firm PwC. “Understanding and managing energy use and embedded carbon in buildings plays an important role in limiting Scope 1 and Scope 2 CO2 emissions.”
To be sure, significant advances in digital systems -- the Internet of Things (IoT), analytics software, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), 3-D printing and more -- are making it possible to build and retrofit office buildings, data centers, factories, hotels and other structures to support maximum sustainability.
Says Carlock: “The technology now exists to transform the way we build and manage energy systems within buildings. We’re able to put data to use and drive enormous improvements in energy use and overall sustainability.”
IT's Role in Green Building Maintenance
An unmistakable shift in thinking about the role of IT in driving sustainability efforts in buildings is unfolding. Environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) programs are partly responsible for this trend, but it’s also clear that “green” idealism is morphing into a pragmatic reality. Concerns about climate change are growing and there’s a growing recognition that smart buildings can lead to enormous cost savings. Fortunately, sensors and systems that were once difficult to install, manage, and use have become simpler and far more powerful.
“In the past, there wasn’t a great deal of momentum supporting and surrounding change, even though it was widely recognized as a good thing,” states Jennifer Layke, Global Director for Energy at the World Resources Institute. “The technology, economics and thinking are now far more favorable. As a result, we’re seeing a growing focus on constructing and retrofitting buildings to support sustainability efforts,” she notes.
In fact, PwC found that 82% of senior executives view climate change and carbon reduction as top-of-mind issues for real-estate development and purchases. Carlock says that while new types of low-carbon concrete and more sustainable building materials play a key role in advancements, the biggest gains revolve around the integration of technology with physical infrastructure and analytics systems that can spot patterns and identify paths to improvement.