Sustainability Street: COP27 and the Built Environment

Liz Beardsley, U.S. Green Building Council

Following the two-week COP27 conference in Egypt, the U.S Green Building Council called for greater action and accountability to address climate change. That’s because the consensus of global leaders and environmentalists at the conference was that the buildings industry, which accounts for 37 percent of energy- and process-related CO2 emissions and 34 percent of energy demand, is not on track to achieve net zero by 2050.   

Welcome back to Sustainability Street, our podcast on the intersection of commercial real estate and the world we live in. For this episode, host CPE Executive Editor Therese Fitzgerald interviews Liz Beardsley, USGBC Lead Policy Counsel, about what she heard and saw at the high-level meeting.

Office of the President of the United States, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Here’s a sample of the topics covered:

• Is the world running out of time? (2:21)
• Reality check for real estate (4:09)
• The “greenwashing” report (8:23)
• U.S. states and cities on the world stage (10:28)
• Are we doing our part as a nation? (14:24)
• The sustainability communication gap (16:50)
• What real estate companies and countries can do before COP28 (20:14)

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