Saving the Planet: Money, Marketing, and Regulations

Sustainability Trends and Insights from Blueprint 2024

We all want to save the planet, right?

Without getting into a political quagmire, I think most of us can agree on that.

And yet: according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, CO₂ emissions in the United States declined by just 3% in 2023 from the prior year, and this was after rising in both 2022 and 2021. This is despite growing electrical vehicle usage, steadily increasing wind and solar power, the accelerating adoption of heat pumps and other more efficient HVAC systems, and a culture where, according to the Pew Research Center, 69% of Americans think the U.S. should strive to reach carbon neutrality by 2050.  

In other words, we aren’t moving the needle, at least not with nearly enough alacrity or consistency. The reasons behind this disconnect between Americans’, and America’s, intentions and the desired outcomes was one of the major themes at a series of environmental panels that I attended at this year’s Blueprint Conference in Las Vegas.

The good news is that there seems to be growing consensus on what needs to change for climate policy, both from the public and private sectors, including the real estate industry, to be more effective. And government regulations, such as Local Law 97 in New York City, are just one part of a very complex tapestry. There are also some important, albeit perhaps tentative, steps being taken in the right direction.

In today’s letter we’ll look at some of those challenges, as well as some of the proposed solutions that could overcome them, including:

• It’s all about the money, or how to use capital infrastructure to solve for climate change;

• People are lazy, or how to market “green” innovations in real estate;

• Too many states, or how to deal with the patchwork of laws and regulations in the U.S.;

• Too much information, or other stuff I learned.