Building Decarbonization

Building a green future: overcoming barriers to decarbonization

Residential and commercial buildings currently account for nearly 40% of carbon emissions in the United States, making decarbonization essential to meeting long-term climate goals. To tackle this challenge, IGS is partnering with a global leader in sustainability, Schneider Electric — named the world’s most sustainable company for 2024 and 2025 by TIME magazine and Statista.

As part of our ongoing research collaboration, IGS and the Schneider Electric Sustainability Research Institute published a first-of-its-kind study showing that over two million new jobs could be created in the US and Europe during the transition to net-zero buildings. These findings were spotlighted at the 2023 BNEF Summit in London.

Building Decarbonization

And now this partnership is leading high-impact research on the social, political, and economic hurdles to building decarbonization. Our latest project aims to identify key barriers to sustainable building transitions and accelerate progress through comprehensive research, with the goal of driving advancements in policy and industry practices. Energy justice is an integral focus of this four-phase project, which includes a systematic literature review, interviews with key stakeholders, focus groups, and a survey. 

Journal Articles

Critically Reviewing the 50 Sociotechnical Risks of Building Sector Decarbonization: Conceptualizing Risk as a Proximity Spiral (6/21/2025) - Energy and Buildings

Building a Green Future: Examining the Job Creation Potential of Electricity, Heating, and Storage in Low-Carbon Buildings (6/1/2023) - The Electricity Journal

Industrial Decarbonization

Additional research is underway to accelerate the adoption of technologies that support industrial decarbonization efforts and improve overall efficiency. IGS and Schneider Electric are working together to gain novel market insights into next-generation, sustainable industrial automation solutions. The project aims to enhance understanding of interoperable and open systems, which are essential for developing sustainable solutions in the industry.