Owners of real estate portfolios have a real urgency to modernize and decarbonize their operations as part of the transition to a net-zero world by 2050. Addressing their operational emissions will not only allow asset owners and operators to meet their environmental responsibilities, but also ensure a viable future for their investments. Decarbonizing real estate portfolios will increase their assets’ value by making them attractive to both investors and tenants, avoiding the risk of stranded assets, loss of value and reduced competitiveness.

As operational energy demand is the primary driver of operational carbon emissions in existing buildings, Schneider Electric and WSP explored a ‘digital first’ approach to building renovations for their research. The aim was to establish how effective digital and electric solutions are in cutting carbon in existing buildings, compared to, or in association with, other Energy Conservation Measures (ECMs) that would improve the envelope or reduce end use demand. WSP carried out energy modelling for a range of ECMs in a series of different scenarios to establish the energy performance and carbon emissions of a standard office building in each scenario.

“We based our analysis on a typical large office building built in the US in the early 2000s, in various U.S. climate zones. Buildings of this age are the most likely to require upgrading, with opportunities for improvements such as going digital, all-electric and replacing natural gas boilers,” says Jay Wratten, WSP’s Innovation Practice Lead from the US.

Jay’s team applied the generic building to a vast number of hypothetical situations, based on ECMs in three main areas:

• Improving the existing building stock through envelope upgrades to improve performance: measures included upgrading windows, adding insulation and sealing the envelope to reduce draughts
• Upgrading the building equipment, including lights, sensors and power management transformers
• Deploying digital optimization through the use of AI, introducing IOT sensor networks for zone-level management and advanced lighting controls

Wratten continues: “We modelled thousands of scenarios to discover how the building would perform in different climates and using various combinations of ECMs. The outcomes are very nuanced, since the ECMs react with each other. For example, if you remove lights, you reduce the energy, but you also lose the heat they create, so your heating need increases slightly in winter. By modelling these ECMs in bulk we gained an understanding of the interactions to create realistic outputs.”