For some years, the commercial real estate industry has largely equated climate change with better control of energy use. Maybe it’s time to look beyond where other carbon emissions and sustainability segments could use more attention.
“I think we’ve focused on operational energy usage, back to where the built environment is, over the last 20 years,” JLL chief sustainability officer and foundation executive director Erin Meezan, told GlobeSt.com. “We’ve gotten more sophisticated in controlling that.”
Where there hasn’t been nearly the same degree of focus is other aspects of core building systems. “There’s not a lot of innovation in things like onsite renewables,” Meezan says.
Her twin roles of sustainability in JLL and also as executive director of the non-profit JLL Foundation, which invests in startups addressing climate impact, give Meezan a broad look at the issue of where the built world needs further attention on sustainability.
Not all the concepts have to do with buildings directly. For example, Novoloop takes plastic waste, breaks down what previously couldn’t have been conventionally recycled, and creates thermoplastic polyurethanes, or TPUs. The materials are plastics that can be reformed into different shapes with heat, like making running shoes.
Some of the startups are far more tied to construction. Mycocycle uses fungi to transform construction waste into low-carbon raw materials. “They all have to be proving and showing that what they’re doing is reducing emissions and addressing global climate change,” says Meezan.
One reason for the flexibility is the process of developing new technologies. First, something has to be proven possible in the lab. Then comes trying to make it scale. An interesting concept might not be commercially viable for many reasons. Or one market turns out to be a bad match while a completely different use of that technology is an excellent fit.
“It might not work here, but it might really work here,” Meezan said. “You have to be open to that.”
Sometimes ideas might sound crazy. Cyanoskin, one of the firms getting backing from JLL Foundation, has a carbon capture technology that lets buildings absorb CO2 through an algae-based exterior coating.
JLL Foundation only started in 2022, so it is still early to calculate a success rate. The organization provides zero interest loans to startups that are expected to repay it and make future deals with other companies possible. They work with Good Machine, a venture studio that understands the product development process from early stages.
“We have to be able to embrace ideas that seem a little crazy, particularly as it relates to the industry now,” Meezan says.