The time is now!

Dear real estate sector,

If there ever was ‘the right time’ to start rethinking our energy consumption, it’s today. The monetary costs of energy are going through the roof, but the real costs of (especially fossil) energy for our society and planet are even many times higher. By rethinking energy, we have a lot to win.

I don’t really have to tell you what’s there to win, right? It’s about money, climate change, justice, and foreign dependency, just to name a few. The accumulation of these factors means that the momentum for change has never been greater than today.

I see and feel it all around me: this momentum brings so much willingness to adapt, it brings energy (pun intended), new ideas, new ways to cooperate. Let’s use this momentum and bring to life our collective vision of the future. A green and healthy future in real estate.

So what’s the connection with hello energy and this momentum? 3 things: communication, community, and challenges. Let me tell you a little more.

1. Communication is the start

hello energy is operational in almost 800 buildings in Europe (with over 10million sqm). With hello energy software there is an active line of communication with thousands of tenants, asset and property managers, and building visitors.

Since last month we’ve been bulking up our tips and tricks to these stakeholders on how they can directly save energy. We’ve called this campaign #beatthebill and have put out examples for asset classes like offices, logistics and others.

Through our online dashboard and over 300 screens in buildings showcasing sustainability content, we give building users the tools to save energy themselves and directly see the results of their efforts.

2. Community is more important than ever

I’m in daily contact with professionals in the real estate sector. That means I’m seeing fantastic initiatives that rethink our energy use. These can be big, like shaping and orienting buildings for optimized natural ventilation, or geo-exchanging heating and cooling with the earth below. But they can also be small, like installing daylight sensors that dim lights when it’s sunny and changing laptop settings to save energy. In our weekly #buildingheroes blog we talk about these people pushing the eco-boundaries.

These people are intrinsically motivated to make a change, and to help others do it too. Both these frontrunners and professionals who are just beginning their energy journey, could all greatly benefit from collective learning. From tapping into each other’s knowledge, that has been gathered over the years (and especially over the past few months).

If only they had a space to do this.

Well, great news! At hello energy we love to walk the talk. So, we built this space. A community space for people to connect with each other and with us, so we can accelerate our real estate energy revolution together. In October we’ll launch.

3. Challenge everyone to join

Besides providing a space for sharing knowledge and best practices, hello energy will organise monthly challenges to immediately bring the lessons shared into action. This means we’ll go from talking together to doing together rapidly.

We will launch this new feature in 2023. These challenges provide hands-on actions anyone can take, in order to eventually reach net-zero. These challenges go beyond saving energy. They focus on reducing our impact holistically. Think of reducing plastic use, improving our recycling, reducing our commuting impact, et cetera.

A call to action!

Whether it’s via direct communication, the community that we’ll launch in October or via any other means, the time is now to help each other rethink energy. Talk, connect, share, help, ask, collaborate. And start doing.

Yours sincerely,

Benno.