The Future of Real Estate Investment in Climate Tech
Over the past decade, the real estate sector has made great strides in embracing technology and innovation. Extraordinary progress has been achieved in building smart cities and structures as the pace of investment in new technologies has scaled to exceed $20 billion annually. While the real estate sector is embracing innovation and technology overall, there must be a greater focus on climate, sustainability, and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) specifically.
Given the magnitude of the climate crisis and the real estate industry’s outsized role in catalyzing meaningful progress in achieving net zero, CREtech Climate, in partnership with the Urban Land Institute (ULI), a cross-disciplinary network of real estate and land use experts whose Center for Sustainability is dedicated to creating healthy, resilient, and high-performance communities around the world, and Fifth Wall, a venture capital firm pioneering for industry-wide climate tech innovation, recently conducted a survey to better understand the real estate industry’s current status in addressing climate change. The goal of the survey was to gather insights from global leaders around current sentiments and investment strategies regarding climate technologies. Climate tech investment and adoption have emerged as opportunities to bolster the industry’s existing efforts to meet the aggressive climate targets set by cities and countries around the globe. However, much work remains and investment dollars are needed at a massive scale to address the magnitude of the climate crisis properly. Through climate innovation and technology investments, the real estate industry is presented with a business opportunity to achieve significant financial returns by investing in climate technologies while also catalyzing the built environment’s journey to net-zero emissions.
Report Summary: Over the past decade, the real estate sector has made great strides in embracing technology and innovation. Extraordinary progress has been achieved in building smart cities and structures as the pace of investment in new technologies has scaled to exceed $20 billion annually. While the real estate sector is embracing innovation and technology overall, there must be a greater focus on climate, sustainability, and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) specifically.
Given the magnitude of the climate crisis and the real estate industry’s outsized role in catalyzing meaningful progress in achieving net zero, CREtech Climate, in partnership with the Urban Land Institute (ULI), a cross-disciplinary network of real estate and land use experts whose Center for Sustainability is dedicated to creating healthy, resilient, and high-performance communities around the world, and Fifth Wall, a venture capital firm pioneering for industry-wide climate tech innovation, recently conducted a survey to better understand the real estate industry’s current status in addressing climate change. The goal of the survey was to gather insights from global leaders around current sentiments and investment strategies regarding climate technologies. Climate tech investment and adoption have emerged as opportunities to bolster the industry’s existing efforts to meet the aggressive climate targets set by cities and countries around the globe. However, much work remains and investment dollars are needed at a massive scale to address the magnitude of the climate crisis properly. Through climate innovation and technology investments, the real estate industry is presented with a business opportunity to achieve significant financial returns by investing in climate technologies while also catalyzing the built environment’s journey to net-zero emissions.