The global effort to cut greenhouse gas emissions has moved ahead in fits and starts over the past few decades as governments and companies across industries pursue standards, reductions, and carbon neutrality. In real estate, emissions stem not only from a building’s energy use but also from the “embodied carbon” generated during construction and retrofits. Building owners must now account for and reduce both to meet regulatory and corporate mandates—and to improve their bottom line, since lower emissions typically mean lower utility costs.
Carbon reduction takes many forms: new construction methods, adoption of efficient systems, or retrofits of existing assets. JLL estimates that retrofitting must occur at five times the current rate to meet global decarbonization targets.
As Peter Drucker famously observed, “you cannot manage what you cannot measure.” Carbon accounting depends on reliable data, and a growing ecosystem of technology firms now helps owners quantify their footprints, report compliance, and reduce emissions. Yet this process remains fragmented: multiple stakeholders—regulators, investors, tenants, and managers—often operate under differing frameworks, leading to inconsistent reporting standards from building to building and company to company.
Today’s Insights by Blueprint report will dive deep into the world of carbon accounting, exploring the regulations, methodologies, and platforms enabling real estate owners and operators to hit their climate goals. We’ll compare and contrast platforms and with specific recommendations for operators.
Federal and Municipal Regulations
Under the second Trump administration there has been some movement in the U.S. to reduce the burden of built world carbon reporting for some industries – and just last month EPA administrator Lee Zeldin announced that the government would “remove reporting obligations for most large facilities, all fuel and industrial gas suppliers, and CO2 injection sites.” But there are still many municipal mandates, like New York City’s Local Law 97, which requires buildings over 25,000 square feet to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2030.
“A lot of the main push for decarbonizing buildings is coming from local jurisdictions, which are really leaning into how buildings can help with their broader sets of challenges and goals,” Paulina Torres, JLL’s global research director, recently told Smart Cities Dive. Depending on the city’s policies, this could mean different levels of disclosure or action on the part of building owners.
“Right now, a number of large and significant cities require disclosure,” says Joe Aamidor of Aamidor Consulting, a firm which advises companies about building operations and technology. “A few cities have gone past disclosure to where there’s actually fines. Some regulations say that you must disclose to us how much energy your buildings use, and in New York they’re even going beyond that and saying ‘We will give you a number of how much energy you can consume and how much carbon you can emit – and anything over that you will be fined.’”
Michael Gilbert, Director of Cleantech, Proptech and Decarbonization at Fairstead Ventures and Head of Energy & Sustainability at Fairstead says his company is primarily focused on operational carbon accounting and management in municipalities that require GHG disclosure and fees: “NYC is where we have a large footprint, and understanding our GHG impacts and options are critical on a building-by-building basis,” he says. “Much of this can often be accomplished via EPA’s (free) Energy Star portfolio manager tool, upon which the NYC energy efficiency benchmarking and GHG disclosure filings are based.”
Looking outside of the U.S., many other countries around the world have a variety of their own targets, requiring real estate companies with an international footprint to continue their carbon accounting and reporting work elsewhere. European leaders have recently looked to “deprioritize” and delay some carbon regulations that were part of its Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive as well, but individual companies are not scrapping their reporting procedures.
Corporate Targets
Governments aside, much of real estate’s carbon accounting comes from company mandates of occupiers, as boards of all types have adopted emissions goals and targets that inevitably include real estate in their calculations.
“For commercial real estate, it’s investors and LPs, and it’s the cities,” said Aamidor. “I think if you are a publicly traded company like Amazon or Wells Fargo — I don’t know if your investors always say ‘you must do this,’ but there is some expectation. It’s similar to owning a building where your investors want you to disclose.”
But different companies and stakeholders might be looking for their carbon accounting to achieve different goals. And some of the accounting likely overlaps with measurements being done for other stakeholders.
“If you’re looking from the private equity standpoint, or even if you’re looking at, say, Google, I actually think there is a lot of double-counting that’s happening in the GHG accounting world,” says Becca Timms, who previously headed up ESG innovation at Jamestown but now has her own consulting firm Ultreia Advisory. “It’s done for different purposes if Jamestown owns a building that is co-owned with Related, and then you have Blackstone or JP Morgan involved as a lender… I was constantly giving people information, and the question was always ‘What are you really doing with this? Is this the investor that owns 2% of this building or do they own the whole thing?’”
And even within a specific company, there can be differing ESG goals for different properties that they operate in.
“When you are hired by Google, for example, you have to work with all of their portfolio, says Ramya Ravichandar, Ph.D, Founder, EcoX AI Consulting. “Some of it is owned by Google — other pieces are leased. And that’s when your reporting gets complicated because they don’t necessarily want you to report on both [types] with the same language.”
Data and Methodology
The calculations for emissions in buildings can be pretty simple — if you have the right data for energy use, it’s a fairly easy conversion to carbon. But the real complexity comes in the reporting and auditing process.
“My strategy [at Jamestown] was really ‘How can we check all of the boxes at the lowest price?’” says Timms of her time heading up sustainability at the CRE owner. She said the accounting really started at the utility bill management level — she was working with software to get the utility bills automated and paid, which she used to also capture GHG information.
Timms says that establishing the inputs and data flows — whether from utility bills or some other method — is what is most important.
“A lot of companies don’t really have their data mapped,” says Timms. “I’ve noticed a lot of companies use estimates. They might do their utility bill payments through their property management side, and they might have investor relations or sustainability goals — and they might just be using square footage and number of employees.”
But once you nail down the process for the data, the platforms for accounting are similar, she says, and switching between them isn’t too hard.
“It used to be a monumental effort to switch platforms,” says Timms. “Now it’s just a spreadsheet download, and reuploading it somewhere else.”
CRE-Specific Needs in Carbon Accounting
Before comparing platforms, it’s worth looking at the typical requirements CRE owners have of carbon accounting platforms, such as:
Picking a Platform
When considering different services providers for carbon accounting there are a few factors to consider, says Fairstead’s Gilbert. Most platforms are good at the accounting part, but they all have additional features: “We look for how seamlessly it integrates with our existing data inputs (primarily utility bills), and incorporates Scope 2 & 3 emissions where necessary” he says. “For real estate companies that are heavily into construction, there could be more differentiation around embedded carbon rather than operational carbon.”
Ravichandar says it’s important that a tool have all the typical frameworks that you want to report against: “If you’re using a platform like Measurabl, you take on the onus of mapping all of the different data points, whether it’s Scope 1 and Scope 2, and sometimes Scope 3,” she says. Many major platforms overlap in their capabilities, but the differences lie in maturity, geographic focus, data connectivity, depth of modeling, and company positioning.
It’s important to consider how a system ingests data and its ability to bring in various inputs like utility bills, meter data, building management system (BMS) data, and tenant data. You also need to make sure that the system handles the types of emissions you need to be reporting out (energy purchase and use, embodied carbon, tenant operations, supply chain, etc..). There’s also a question of how granular the data is that they collect and process – do they run real-time or interval data, or is it based on estimates? And you also want to make sure you are able to benchmark and compare all of the different types of assets in your portfolio.
Other considerations include whether a platform has a project management system for decarbonization which can track initiatives and report on energy savings over time (and whether that is customizable); whether it supports frameworks and audit trails that you would need to satisfy; how easily it can integrate with all of your existing platforms and scale across different types of assets in your portfolio; and how easy it is to export data, audit emissions, and have third‑party verification (which can be important for investor disclosures).
Service Providers
Measurabl — This ESG platform for commercial real estate is widely used by customers in the U.S. and Canada – and is in the process of expanding globally. It includes strong carbon accounting capabilities for CRE, and works well for companies that want to go beyond annual reporting into active decarbonization. The product provides integrated ESG, carbon, benchmarking, and project tracking.
Measurabl pulls a lot of data directly off of energy bills, and is able to automatically ingest data from disparate sources. It’s considered a strong product for portfolio-level reporting, as the company provides near real‐time carbon insights via their “Optimize” product, capturing interval data for more accurate emissions tracking.
The company supports Scope 1 and 2 emissions calculation out of the box, and has modules for target‐setting, benchmarking, dashboards, and disclosure (for example, reporting to GRESB or CDP). There is also support for decarbonization planning: their “Decarb” module allows simulation of interventions, and energy/emissions projections. It also has a fairly intuitive UX that appeals to asset/portfolio managers, providing the ability to view emissions by site, filter by property type, year built, et cetera. While the company handles Scope 1 and 2 well, full Scope 3 coverage (including tenant operations, supply chain, embodied carbon) might require additional modules or custom work. Measurabl works best with companies that already have good data infrastructure (metering, BMS, utility data access).
Deepki — Another major player in commercial real estate carbon accounting, Deepki’s platform is especially strong in European real estate and with a focus on ESG data intelligence and the full building lifecycle. The company markets itself as providing a “fully populated ESG data intelligence platform” for real‐estate investors, owners and managers. The platform is especially suited to a CRE owner or investor with a large portfolio in Europe (or globally) who wants comprehensive ESG/carbon/lifecycle coverage.
The company has strong data collection and quality controls, and with over 400,000 assets in its database, Deepki provides benchmarking for energy use and carbon emissions across typologies. It also has strong coverage of the full carbon lifecycle via the company’s acquisition of Nooco (which specializes in calculating embodied carbon in construction/renovation) — operational emissions are still the easier part.
One thing to consider, though, if you are U.S.‑based (or in another region outside Europe) you may need to check local your grid emissions factors, regulatory/market coverage, and whether the platform is as tailor‑made to your region as it is to Europe. And if your portfolio lacks metering, data standardization, then the benefits of Deepki may be more limited.
NZero —NZero, which describes itself as an “energy intelligence” and emissions measurement platform, was acquired earlier this year by Asian carbon accounting firm Asuene. The product, which is strong in the U.S., is great for granular data ingestion, automation of emissions calculation, and focus on precision and forecasting.
Its real-time, hourly insight is a competitive differentiator (vs. tools that only handle monthly billing data) — and so it could be a good fit for CRE owners that prioritize very detailed operational energy/emissions monitoring (e.g., sub‑metering, real‑time analytics) and want to drive operational efficiency.
The company supports Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions accounting, aligned with GHG Protocol, and delivers hourly-level insights to optimize operations and decarbonization. It has an emphasis on a “Measure → Analyze → Report → Act” workflow.
The platform may have less built‑in support for portfolio‑level strategy, benchmarking, and retrofit planning (as compared to full ESG platforms). And if your focus is more on strategy, investor reporting or lifecycle embodied carbon, you may need add‑ons or additional consultancy.
IBM Envizi — This platform is an enterprise‑grade sustainability / ESG‑data platform that provides modules for emissions accounting, energy/utility tracking, decarbonisation modeling, and reporting/disclosure. It is especially strong on emissions accounting rigor in enterprise‑scale disclosure (GHG Protocol compliant, large factor libraries, audit‑ready).
For Scope 1 & 2 GHG Accounting and Reporting, the company has an emissions calculation engine built on the GHG Protocol with over 40,000 emission factors, automated factor selection, market‑ vs location‑based emissions, and custom dashboards. Larger managers with a wide variety of assets will appreciate the company’s rich modelling, forecasting, analytics, and scenario tools for decarbonisation. It also has strong integration potential across systems (utilities, ERPs, bills, etc) and is strong from a data governance perspective.
As it is a heavy and complex platform, Envizi may be less attractive to owners of smaller, less-diverse portfolios with narrower sets of reporting and data needs.
Verdani — Verdani is a full-service sustainability and ESG consulting firm with a strong focus on the built environment and real estate. As opposed to the platforms above, the company is more service-heavy and combines data and analytics with advisory services, decarbonisation strategy, and tools tailored for CRE owners. If you have a substantial real estate portfolio, face building performance standards/regulatory risk, need to integrate tenant/embodied carbon/Scope 3, and want strategic decarbonization planning (not just measurement), then Verdani is a good fit.
Historically, Verdani has partnered with Measurabl (their clients use Measurabl’s software) to offer integrated ESG solutions with layered on regulatory reporting, benchmarking, green building certifications, and project implementation. The company claims to be vendor-agnostic in many cases, meaning they can work alongside or integrate with multiple software tools rather than forcing a single stack.
Verdani is especially valuable when your organization needs both strategy, project execution, and technical assistance, not just software. But because part of their value is in hands-on consulting services, the cost may scale differently than SaaS.
Utility API — UtilityAPI provides an API platform that enables applications to connect to utility data (meter readings, billing, intervals) easily and securely. It is essentially a data ingestion layer for energy consumption, and integrates very well across U.S. utilities, making it easy to pull verified usage and bill data across different properties.
Unlike the other firms, it is a pure data provider — not a full carbon accounting and modeling platform by itself. Their API includes endpoints for meters, bills, intervals, authorizations, and ongoing monitoring. Their “accounting” API (billing account metadata) is being rolled out for selected utilities. Because they are focused on data, they do not provide high-level carbon modeling, scenario analytics, or CRE-specific decarbonization strategies for clients —but they integrate very well with other companies that have analytics platforms.
Goby (Conservice) — Goby, an ESG platform operated by Conservice is a great tool if the main goal is tracking utility consumption and cost, and identifying inefficiencies. Its tools can aid in benchmarking against peers or national medians to prioritize cartoon reduction efforts. It is a relatively straightforward platform vs. its peers, and can serve as a good entrypoint to get started with sustainability/utility monitoring.
The platform is particularly good at utility data capture for energy/water/waste consumption, and in linking it to cost. The dashboard helps identify property outliers and savings opportunities. There is good integration of information between spend, consumption and efficiency.
Goby’s tools are still developing, and CRE customers that need more advanced forecasting and analysis may want to layer on other services.
Legence (RE Tech Advisors) — Legence’s Trove platform is particularly good for large CRE portfolios, and can track decarbonization across a large number of buildings. The platform aggregates building‑level environmental sustainability and decarbonization performance, prioritizes investments, reduces risk, supports regulatory compliance.
More than just an emissions tracking system, Legence tries to help clients understand priorities, simplify measurements, and make decisions to optimize their decarbonization efforts. The system can be particularly useful for large CRE companies that want to show performance and progress across a variety of key indicators, and make data-driven decisions about where to best put their decarbonization efforts.
The carbon accounting landscape in commercial real estate is maturing rapidly, shaped by the combined pressures of municipal mandates, investor expectations, and corporate ESG commitments. As owners and operators confront both regulatory deadlines and market scrutiny, data accuracy and system interoperability are emerging as the defining differentiators among platforms. Whether through purpose-built tools like Measurabl and Deepki or hybrid service providers such as Verdani and Legence, success increasingly hinges on the ability to translate measurement into actionable decarbonization.
The next phase of progress will belong to those who treat carbon accounting not as compliance, but as core infrastructure for value creation, capital access, and long-term portfolio resilience.
–David Hirschman
