In the race against time to meet 2050 climate targets, building decarbonization looms large—but high upfront costs and a lack of public awareness are two of the biggest barriers for many countries, slowing the adoption of energy efficiency and electrification technologies. The top risks center on performance and reliability.
These findings come from two new studies by Schneider Electric and Boston University’s Institute for Global Sustainability (IGS), published in Nature Communications and Energy and Buildings, that identify 95 sociotechnical barriers and 50 risks hindering progress in the high-stakes buildings sector.
The built environment sits on the frontline of climate change as the single largest contributor of greenhouse gas emissions. All told, it accounts for roughly 37% of global energy- and process-related emissions from construction, operations, and materials, according to the United Nations (UN) Environment Programme.
Many of the tools needed to cut building emissions already exist. These include technologies to increase efficiency, fully electrify buildings, and add renewable power from the building or the grid.
So why are decarbonization strategies lagging in this sector? To better understand the dynamics involved, the research partners took a different approach to this question. They broadened their focus beyond technology fixes and cost efficiency to consider social factors and other less-recognized concerns, including the interplay between them.
“What we really wanted to look at here are the sociotechnical barriers and risks, because we recognize that it is not just a technical problem,” explains Erin Heinz, the lead author of both studies and a postdoctoral research associate at IGS. “It’s a social, political, economic, and behavioral problem, too, and all these forces have the potential to create inefficiencies that drive up costs, cause delays, or introduce new harms.”
“It’s a social, political, economic, and behavioral problem, too, and all these forces have the potential to create inefficiencies that drive up costs, cause delays, or introduce new harms.”
— Erin Heinz
The scale of the transition is also daunting, requiring new construction to keep pace with a world population projected to grow by two billion over the next 60 years, according to a 2024 UN report, while also meeting evolving infrastructure demands and updating existing buildings.
The Biggest Barriers: High Costs and Low Awareness
Using cutting-edge machine learning capabilities, the research team analyzed thousands of studies, resulting in the largest literature review of its kind, to identify 95 sociotechnical barriers to building decarbonization.
Globally, high costs are a prevalent concern for initial investments, particularly for green projects, along with a general lack of awareness about the benefits and risks of available technologies. Other often-cited barriers include limited government support, inadequate building codes, and poor market demand.
The study in Nature Communications makes the case that all these barriers are interrelated, or “locked-in” with one another, and overcoming them requires an intersectional approach to untangle economic, political, social, and behavioral interests.
“We need to talk about these overlapping barriers in the same conversation, not as silos,” says Benjamin Sovacool, the director of IGS and co-author of both studies. “Economic costs are a signal of all kinds of things, such as a lack of professional training, but this can be shaped by political, technical, and cultural factors, and vice versa. This barrier came up across numerous studies, and it’s primarily driven by a multitude of different influences.”
The study’s authors emphasize the importance of lifecycle analysis as well. They found that building sector hesitancy to adopt decarbonization technologies stems from complex sociotechnical barriers across all stages of building development, including design, planning, production, and regulation. The conflicting priorities of different stakeholders in the process, ranging from the building owner to the architect, contractor, occupant, and others, also factor in.
The Top Risks: Underperformance and Unreliability
To meet climate benchmarks, decarbonizing the building sector calls for balancing precaution with urgency and scalability while avoiding unintended consequences, according to Heinz.
“There’s a lot of concern as we bring in new technologies that they are not going to perform as well as conventional systems, or that the reliability risk is too great for critical buildings like hospitals,” says Heinz. “But we have to make changes, because business as usual is unequivocally bad for climate action and ultimately human health.”
Drawing on a decade of literature, the 50 distinct sociotechnical risks identified in Energy and Buildings span six thematic areas: performance, operations and systems, health, safety, and comfort, economic and financial, environmental, and human capital and social equity.
The researchers found that not all of them get equal attention: underperformance, unreliability, and health and safety issues receive the largest focus, while poor labor conditions and other social equity concerns get the least.
The researchers also introduce a new conceptual tool, called the “risk perception spiral” model, for visualizing how risks are perceived differently, depending on stakeholder roles and building lifecycle phases. They found that early- and end-of-life stages remain comparatively under-researched, underscoring the need to account for risks at all stages, from embodied carbon in materials to long-term decommissioning.
The goal of this research, says the authors, is to broaden risk assessments, better anticipate harms, and design more equitable, effective decarbonization strategies that involve all stakeholders, including tenants, workers, and communities.
“This study brings attention to the social, health, equity, and lifecycle dimensions involved in building decarbonization,” explains Thomas Kwan, the global vice president of strategic innovation and industrial ecosystems at Schneider Electric and a visiting researcher at IGS. “Understanding these different perspectives in risk assessments can guide a more just, inclusive approach.”
The ongoing research collaboration between IGS and Schneider Electric brings together an academic research team led by IGS Director Benjamin Sovacool, recognized as one of the most highly cited researchers, with TIME’s most sustainable company in the world.
“As research partners, we have achieved a nice balance between the social science and the economic approach, and between academic and industry insights, to address one of the most critical questions that we’re facing in the next 25 years,” says Sovacool.
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