One of the biggest themes that came out of CREtech New York, a conference dedicated to real estate innovation and sustainability that was held 19 to 21 September 2023, was the risk of climate change to not only the built environment, but to real estate investors themselves.

Real estate carbon emission levels, along with the risk data and analysis determining them, will increasingly become make-or-break factors in investment decisions. They will also have the potential to throw up major hurdles to refinancing — thereby causing major ramifications to commercial real estate in some of the globe’s biggest markets.

Consequently, the property sector has no choice but to adopt climate tech’s risk mitigation and decarbonisation tools. This differentiates climate tech from proptech in general. It could be argued it is bad business to not adopt proptech. But not using climate tech in investment plans is potentially catastrophic.

Driving this forced adoption is a ser