In October, Diamond Developers billed its upcoming SEE Institute center for sustainability in Dubai as the world's first net-zero carbon building, with offsets reducing embodied emissions. Engineering firm Petinelli in 2021 received LEED Zero Carbon certification for its headquarters in Curitiba, Brazil. The Colgate-Palmolive building in Burlington, New Jersey, did the same and also zeroed out emissions from occupant transportation. Green Building Council's new LEED Zero Carbon certification, which must be renewed annually, named its first two projects in 2020, including the Hanergy Renewable Energy Center in Beijing, which demonstrated zero CO2 emissions in energy for a 12-month period.

Its first Zero Carbon designation went to Google's office at 6 Pancras Square in London last year. The International Living Future Institute's Zero Carbon Certification, born in 2018, applies to energy-efficient projects that demonstrate onsite renewable energy or offsets that eliminate carbon in operations over a year, and that disclose and offset embodied carbon in building materials. Eliminating fossil fuels is their primary ingredient. However, net-zero carbon buildings are in their embryonic stage the World Resources Institute says they account for only 1 percent of buildings in the world. In September, the world's largest real estate investment and management firm CBRE Group joined them. More than 200 businesses have signed on to the Climate Pledge, launched in 2019 by Amazon and Global Optimism, agreeing to decarbonize by 2040 a decade ahead of the goals of the Paris Agreement. That would diminish the nearly 40 percent of global CO2 emissions currently contributed by buildings. More than 100 businesses and organizations have signed on to the World Green Building Council's Net Zero Carbon Buildings Commitment, which seeks to decarbonize the buildings sector by 2050 and get halfway there by 2030. With sustainability and ESG factors being increasingly important for competitive features, net-zero carbon commitments are emerging as the next big 'must-have' for large owners and operators seeking to access finance, reduce risk and attract top-notch employees, tenants and clients. This summer, about one-fifth of office space remained vacant in New York City, Chicago and San Francisco - and even in Texas, with the lowest vacancies, offices are only about half full. And in this moment of the Great Wait and the Great Resignation, many companies are dialing back their office reopening plans while others, including tech leaders from Adobe to Zoom, are extending remote and hybrid work options indefinitely.Ībout one-third of workers are back in brick-and-mortar workplaces, but the market remains rugged for many commercial real estate owners, operators and developers. professionals stopped commuting to work in spring of 2020, laboring from home for months or longer. The COVID-19 pandemic reset the business of commercial real estate, with repercussions still coming into focus.

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