The property industry has a huge carbon footprint. Here’s how to reduce it

Buildings have a dirty secret: they are among the planet’s worst climate offenders. Heating, cooling and powering existing offices, homes and factories accounts for 27% of global energy-related carbon-dioxide emissions. Constructing new ones involves mountains of steel and colossal amounts of cement, and combined with demolition accounts for another 10% of the global CO₂ emitted each year. Building debris generates a third of the European Union’s annual waste by weight.

What is more, landlords and homeowners, and the construction industry, have a rotten record on climate change. Only a tiny fraction of properties are carbon neutral, and on the current trajectory it will take nearly a century to decarbonise the rest. As the world urbanises, a dirty building boom beckons: by one estimate, cities will need to add 13,000 buildings every day until 2050, just to keep up with global population growth.