From the Blog

Getting your buildings to become more sustainable.

January 31, 2025

As part of the Impact Report from the RICS for 2024, Sustainability and decarbonisation are top priorities. In my last post I mentioned driving recruitment from diverse backgrounds, an enormously important part of the future of surveying, but getting the built environment to produce less carbon must be one the most important.

The RICS is playing a leading role in creating a suite of solutions for carbon assessment and retrofit which they have been promoting to policy makers and political and industry leaders.

The built environment is responsible for almost 40% of global carbon emissions, including buildings and infrastructure assets, in the UK The Green Building Council considers the built environment to contribute up to 25% of the UK’s consumption base GHG emissions.

Initially, the built environment has focussed mainly on operational carbon through energy reduction targets in building regulations, such as Part L in the UK, but more recently the Whole Life carbon assessment of the lifespan of the building is being reviewed, an end-to-end of a building’s life.

All of this work supports the “Buildings Breakthrough” launched at COP28 which aims to accelerate the transformation of the building sector, making near-zero emissions and climate-resilient buildings the normal by 2030!

This is an exciting time for the Building sector with a rapid escalation of green energy solutions and new targets being set for all operators.

I am keeping a close eye as are all my colleagues on regulatory changes and how this impacts on my client’s property portfolios both domestic and commercial.

If you would like to find out how we can help advise you to get your buildings to become more sustainable, get in touch with myself or one of the RICS colleagues.