What’s the BRIGHTEST event last year on the Climate issue?
Solutions House 2025, hosted by Futerra and the Exponential Roadmap Initiative, is set to bring three action-packed days of energy, inspiration, and impact to New York Climate Week.
They share bold ideas, breakthrough thinking, and tangible climate solutions from a powerful mix of innovatora creatives and changemakers.
As a USGBC member, I was lucky to have a sneak peek at this event. Here is one of the panel discussion Moderated by Rhiannon Jacobsen, the Managing Director at USGBC.
Who were there?
Laurie Kerr, Climate Principal, USGBC
Mark Chambers, Climate policy , Social Justice Advocator, Licensed Architect
Sarah E O’Keeffe, Director, Sustainability and Climate Justice. Cleveland OH
Michael Reed, Director OF Building Transformation, New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA)
Here is the first question they’ve discussed:
“Are existing buildings already a big thing for climate?”
Rhiannon Jacobson:I'm glad we started right off with a solid word. Rhiannon Jacobson, US Green Building Council. I have the pleasure of being the moderator for today's panel. I am our Managing Director for the US. I'm focused for climate change.
Obviously, we've got a sophisticated audience here at solutions house. You've probably all heard the statistic, 1/3 all emissions come from construction and buildings. I'm clearly feel at the US Green Building Council, that the time has more than come to really put the focus on and emphasis on existing buildings.
Overall, we've had a discussion in advance of this panel. There are a lot of market drivers that are making this possible. We're excited to talk about that premise today, really understand some of the tools and the resources that you can access to make that happen, as well as the conditions that are happening at a market level that really make this possible.
So with that said, I'm going to do my very best to open up for Q and A by the end of the session. So please be thinking of questions as we go, and I am sure that all of our panelists would be happy to answer questions also one on one afterwards. With that, I'm just going to call out the name of a session again, making existing buildings the next big thing for climate. Are existing buildings already a big thing for climate? Are they getting the right amount of attention and emphasis? What are some of the strong signals fordecarbonization that you're seeing? Does anybody want to start with that?
Sarah O'Keefe: I'll jump in. Sure. One thing that's happening in Cleveland it's not quite as old as New York City, but it is a very old city. We have lots and lots of empty buildings. Our population has gone down to 380,000 hold and steady, but it was built as a city for a million people, right? So we're looking at a lot of public assets and other assets in the community that can be reused. And a great signal that I'm seeing, or that we're seeing, is that developers are reusing those buildings. We're doing adaptive reuse in Cleveland. One great example is our police headquarters, 250,000 square foot building built in 1920 going to use district heat, very cost efficient and saving on per square foot for the development of that versus building new, which is the original plan. So that's really exciting.
Lori Kerr: All right, I would say no, they (existing buildings) don't get the attention they deserve. And I think buildings in general don't. When people think of carbon emissions, they think about transportation and power plants, friends, the cocktail conversation. People look at me blankly, like buildings create carbon emissions. That happens to be too they're not, they're not even moving, they're not smoking or anything. So people don't get it by an large, and then to the extent that they get it, it's new buildings, but existing buildings, as we know, are going to be like something like 80% of the buildings we'll have in 2050 or buildings we'll already have today. So is that always true? Though they're not getting enough attention? No, in places like New York, Boston, Washington, St Louis, there are ordinances to reduce the carbon emissions from building. So some isolated places, there's a lot of attention. But I would say, in general, not enough.
Mark Chambers: One of the things that I've been most excited about, even though it hasn't actually come to fruition, as clearly as I would have liked, is the adaptive reuse of commercial office buildings for residential, right? So that's the thing, post pandemic, we got into the zone of recognizing that people prefer to be able to be at home when their packages arrive, and they like to be able to live a life that is not fully disconnected from other things that make them happy. And so that means hybrid workforces are something that are have been here to stay since the pandemic.
Being able to look at how we use commercial real estate and adapting them for residential is not an easy task. The floor plates are gigantic. They're not easy to cut up and to make it easy for occupancy in that way. But it does hold a promise of how we can think about our downtown corridors to make them much more multi use, making sure that people can kind of live in the spaces where they also work. I think that is, for me, has remains one of the more interesting developments that I think helps us to really understand whether existing buildings can be utilized in a way where people have tangible benefits that they appreciate.
Michael Reed: Three like quick points on what are drivers? 1. I think we do have really aging infrastructure, so these buildings need to be modernized. 2. The second is we have both changing climate and weather patterns, and then 3. changing consumer preferences.
So the need for more cooling, for example, is a significant opportunity for decarbonization. And then last but not least, is the technological progress. If you were to look in 2017 at the heat pumps that were commercially available in New York City, and then you looked again today, you would see it would be like night and day. And I think that's continuing to move forward at quite a rapid clip.
Dana Robbins Schneider: So I would agree that buildings, widely, probably don't get the attention they deserve. But I think this panel in all of our experiences is probably skewed in that it's our career, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that right the same way, I'm not a doctor, but I understand how important doctors are. I think that if you have the right codes and the right regulations and the right standards in thecities or states where the buildings are, and there are guidelines for those requirements, and there are people like us who continue to demonstrate the payback for making these kinds of investments in deep energy retrofits, then I think that that's enough, right?
I think as long as the people whose job it is to design and retrofit buildings, and the people whose job it is to ensure that those buildings meet the regulations and requirements where they are, and that those regulations and requirements continue to advance with technology and science, then I think that's okay. I don't think everybody in the world needs to.
It's great if everybody understands how important this is, but as long as the people who are responsible for doing this work understand it and do it right, I think that's what's most important. And I think that, you know, having panels like this to share our experience, hopefully with others who have an impact to me, is the most important thing.
Are you now curious about how to give those existing buildings new life and new meanings? Stay tune on our future posts…
Till then, Happy 2026!