How digital innovation supports sustainable building portfolios

Decar­bon­i­sa­tion is now a pri­or­i­ty, not only in con­struc­tion, but across the entire design-build-oper­ate life­cy­cle of real estate assets. Devel­op­ers and prop­er­ty port­fo­lio hold­ers are look­ing to reduce their car­bon foot­prints to achieve net-zero goals and reduce oper­a­tional costs, as they grap­ple to mit­i­gate the cli­mate impact of their build­ings and deal with ener­gy price shocks.

Many organ­i­sa­tions have com­mit­ted to sus­tain­abil­i­ty pledges includ­ing Race to Zero and SBTi, says Sadaf Askari, sus­tain­abil­i­ty part­ner man­ag­er at IES, but most still have some way to go in defin­ing and imple­ment­ing decar­bon­i­sa­tion strate­gies. “With build­ings account­ing for almost 40% of glob­al emis­sions, com­pa­nies and port­fo­lio hold­ers need to make decar­bon­i­sa­tion invest­ment deci­sions based on data they can trust,” she adds.

What they may not know is that tech­nol­o­gy – referred to as ‘dig­i­tal twins’ – can pro­vide just that. By enabling the cre­ation of real-time dig­i­tal coun­ter­parts of build­ings and port­fo­lios, com­pa­nies can analyse their car­bon out­put and find ways to reduce it.

IES, which devel­ops dig­i­tal twin tech­nol­o­gy to reduce the envi­ron­men­tal impact of build­ings and cities, sees sev­er­al ways the tech­nol­o­gy can sup­port decar­bon­i­sa­tion; help­ing inform net-zero invest­ments, divest from fos­sil fuels, mit­i­gate ris­ing ener­gy prices, and even opti­mise con­di­tions for build­ing occu­pants.

IES’ ICL dig­i­tal twin suite has helped com­pa­nies sim­u­late entire build­ing port­fo­lios to mon­i­tor oper­a­tional per­for­mance in real-time, under­stand the impact of net-zero invest­ments and iden­ti­fy inef­fi­cien­cies and improve­ments. This can help inform decar­bon­i­sa­tion roadmaps, show­ing what actions are need­ed to meet client tar­gets or by iden­ti­fy­ing short­falls in exist­ing plans. “Our dig­i­tal twin is a mod­el of the actu­al build­ing rep­re­sent­ing its per­for­mance at any point in time,” says Askari. “We use data and physics pow­ered sim­u­la­tions to under­stand a diverse range of sce­nar­ios and sup­port deci­sion-mak­ing.”

As coun­tries seek to cut reliance on Russ­ian gas and the need to divest from fos­sil fuels gath­ers pace, many are also turn­ing to dig­i­tal twins to iden­ti­fy alter­na­tive ener­gy solu­tions. “The tech­nol­o­gy can be used to sim­u­late whole ener­gy sys­tems and assess how groups of build­ings inte­grate with heat­ing and cool­ing net­works, renew­ables, EV charg­ing sta­tions and demand opti­mi­sa­tion solu­tions,” says Askari. “We can iden­ti­fy ways to reduce reliance on the grid, share ener­gy local­ly and increase the capac­i­ty of renew­able ener­gy gen­er­a­tion and stor­age to improve resilience.”

That’s with­out even men­tion­ing the abil­i­ty to sup­port the reg­u­la­to­ry mine­field that is ESG. Like many sec­tors, real estate own­ers are fac­ing pres­sure to bol­ster their ESG cre­den­tials, with 60% – accord­ing to Deloitte’s 2022 ‘Com­mer­cial Real Estate Out­look’ – believ­ing ESG ini­tia­tives bring new oppor­tu­ni­ties and give them a com­pet­i­tive edge. “This is anoth­er area where dig­i­tal twins can help,” says Askari. “Port­fo­lio own­ers can mea­sure and con­tin­u­ous­ly mon­i­tor ESG KPIs, iden­ti­fy­ing improve­ments via bespoke dash­boards. That helps them meet report­ing and dis­clo­sure require­ments, but also min­imis­es poten­tial invest­ment risks.”

Using tech­nol­o­gy to boost your build­ings’ envi­ron­men­tal cre­den­tials can raise their val­ue and low­er asso­ci­at­ed cli­mate risks, but the busi­ness ben­e­fits extend to occu­pants too. Research sug­gests bet­ter indoor air qual­i­ty can lead to pro­duc­tiv­i­ty improve­ments of 8–11%. In organ­i­sa­tions where 90% of typ­i­cal over­heads are spent on employ­ees, minor improve­ments in pro­duc­tiv­i­ty can sub­stan­tial­ly impact turnover and prof­it. Port­fo­lio own­ers can bal­ance ener­gy use with occu­pant needs, using their dig­i­tal twin to mon­i­tor and improve air qual­i­ty, com­fort and ven­ti­la­tion. “The well­be­ing of occu­pants remains a top pri­or­i­ty of build­ing man­age­ment. You can’t reduce ener­gy use to the lev­el that occu­pants are unhap­py,” adds Askari.

There is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to decar­bon­i­sa­tion. How­ev­er, the pow­er of dig­i­tal twins for real estate lies in their abil­i­ty to han­dle com­plex and dynam­ic build­ing port­fo­lios, analysing data and pro­duc­ing high­ly accu­rate sim­u­la­tions to inform busi­ness deci­sions. “To have a real-time under­stand­ing of your port­fo­lio you need to accu­mu­late mul­ti­ple sources of data in one place,” says Askari. “Our dig­i­tal twins allow com­pa­nies to make sense of that data, pre­dict a diverse range of sce­nar­ios and ensure they are on track to reach their decar­bon­i­sa­tion goals.”

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Pro­mot­ed by IES