In late 2020, ULI’s Greenprint Center for Building Performance interviewed members of the Sustainable Development Council (SDC) to inform an “outlook” for 2021: What sustainability topics and issues are on the rise, why do they matter, and what should the industry do about it? On the basis of the knowledge shared by these experts, Greenprint identified 10 issues that will likely affect decisionmaking in the months ahead and beyond:
- Real Estate’s Increasing Role in Advancing Sustainability Throughout the Market
- Increased Appetite for ESG Investing
- Heightened Emphasis on Health and Social Equity
- Baseline Expectation for Energy Efficiency in Real Estate
- Tenants Driving Sustainability Innovation
- Emissions Reductions through Embodied Carbon of Building Construction Materials
- Increasingly Grid-Interactive Buildings
- Resilience and Climate Risk as a Priority for Investments
- Water as a Resource to Be Conserved and Leveraged
- Waste Reduction Over a Building’s Life Cycle