The rapidly shifting climate is changing the landscape of property values, tenant expectations, and regulatory demands in the Greater Bay Area (GBA), imposing a need for urgent action. Under the global climate innovation momentum, the real estate industry in the GBA is provided with opportunities to achieve significant financial returns by investing in climate technologies while catalysing the built environment’s journey to net-zero emissions.

The real estate in the GBA also presents tremendous potential with the increasing applicability of Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, blockchain and other emerging technologies. However, enterprises have yet to fully grasp the value of smart technology. The major challenge encountered in the GBA, resulting from the lack of clear standards and integrated products in the market, is that of integrating legacy and system change. Another challenge is the shortage of climate technology talents.

From climate technologies, the GBA’s real estate gains transformative potentials through what the technologies offer: cost-effectiveness, smarter risk mitigation, innovative business models, and re-evaluation of tangible impacts on human health and safety to elucidate resilience and sustainability strategies. In this regard, the necessity of accelerating climate technologies adoption in GBA’s real estate, through the greenprint system change approach, appears to be crucial.

The approach focuses on reducing financial burdens, mitigating risks, and simplifying implementation. By leveraging human-centred systems, this approach delves into the complexities of the technology system; identifies systemic barriers; and defines the pain points, actionable insights and strategic interventions to harmonise growth with environmental imperatives.

Key interventions include: bringing together decision-makers to map out roles and relationships in scaling-up climate technologies; developing big data analytics to enable insightful business decisions; creating value for users by harnessing technology’s power in providing value-added services; fostering innovation through regulatory sandboxing and the development of systematic digital strategies; streamlining retrofit solutions to minimise disruption; and reshaping the operating model and establishing a broad technology partnership ecosystem.

These interventions empower corporations to effectively mitigate climate impact without compromising their competitiveness, ensuring business performance. As a window of opportunity to mitigate worst-case climate scenarios within the real estate, the greenprint change approach is not simply an option but an urgent imperative in the GBA.

This article is contributed by Ir Dr Alex Gbaguidi with the coordination of the Environmental Division.