Chapter 8
Developing a Comprehensive Decarbonization Strategy*
10 High-Impact Moves to Reduce Total Cost of Occupancy
5 Minute Read
Apply an end-to-end solution to help identify, implement and achieve decarbonization across your organization.
With companies around the world making sustainability commitments, Corporate Real Estate & Facilities (CRE&F) leaders must develop comprehensive decarbonization strategies for the portfolios they manage. Those strategies will reduce not only carbon emissions, but also Total Cost of Occupancy (TCO) and related spending.
Depending on location and property type, CRE&F leaders can work with subject matter experts to deploy fully integrated programs that can scale across their portfolios to drive cost savings, hedge against poorly performing facilities and increase confidence in reaching performance targets and public commitments.
The conversation is shifting from ‘how much can I save costs’ to ‘how do I mitigate exposure to future price increases and do that sustainably?’
The six elements which CBRE recommends as part of a comprehensive decarbonization strategy include:
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Establish your decarbonization strategy
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Continuously improve energy efficiency
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Electrify real estate and transportation
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Transition to renewable energy and carbon-free fuels
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Decarbonize your supply chain
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Offset your carbon balance
How to Begin?
- Apply an Integrated Strategy. The framework brings together key stakeholders from all areas of an organization, guided by subject matter experts, to foster alignment on decarbonization targets and performance—resulting in a unified plan to reach net zero or better.
- Implement a Foundation for Data-Driven Decision Making. The process creates one single source of truth for sustainability and decarbonization data, enabling decision-makers to understand, prioritize and act.
- Adopt an Adaptive and Iterative Structure. Decarbonization is a dynamic process and changes occur as organizations change. Our framework adapts with these changes due to internal efforts and external factors accompanied by a carbon forecast and inventory management plan.
Why Now?
Failure to drive decarbonization could soon become a business liability—and contribute to global socio-economic and environmental risk.
It's critical for every company to begin with a proactive decarbonization plan, made up of clear strategies and a roadmap that spans operations, leasing and capital expenditures. Having a plan is the only way to manage up-front costs and regulation, while successfully achieving sustainability goals.
High-Impact Examples:
- A global technology client with aggressive sustainability and renewable energy goals partnered with CBRE to secure a 24/7 renewable-supply agreement. CBRE is providing the client with renewable supply advisory services including market price validation, financial cashflow analysis, supplier negotiation support and industry knowledge.
- A financial services client is partnering with CBRE to assist them with an emissions data hygiene assessment, greenhouse gas baseline performance year definition for 2019, and revised enterprise Scope 1 and 2 emissions targets to reach their net zero goal.
- A public enterprise client partnered with CBRE to consolidate the management of their energy and sustainability objectives to a single-point-of-contact with end-to-end service capabilities – all supported by a global market intelligence network. CBRE has successfully driven innovation and integration of the client’s sustainability objectives across all service areas. In addition, CBRE helped the client avoid more than $2.5 million in environmental regulatory fines, by jointly establishing meticulous compliance and reporting protocols.
* Updated strategies and lessons learned since publication of the 2022 report.
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