English
September 09, 2026
Smart, Resilient Buildings are the Next Big Climate Breakthrough
Smart buildings can become powerful climate solutions by cutting energy waste, reducing emissions and helping balance the grid through AI and intelligent controls.
When people think about the future of climate technology, they often envision next-generation electric vehicles, groundbreaking new clean energy sources or advanced carbon removal technologies. Few think about the office buildings, hospitals or apartment complexes that they walk by every day. But the next climate breakthrough may be the building you’re sitting in right now.
The climate infrastructure hiding in plain sight
Buildings are an essential part of our world, and there are billions of them, representing trillions of dollars of existing infrastructure. Many have a projected lifespan of half a century or longer. Together, those buildings account for close to 30% of global energy demand and approximately 26% of global energy-related emissions.
These facts and figures might make buildings seem like an energy and emissions challenge. But with the new technologies we have at our disposal, the opposite is true. Smart buildings can shift from passive energy consumers into intelligent climate infrastructure. We can’t replace every building. But, we can upgrade millions of them.
A new model for smart building performance
We can’t see it, but we’re surrounded by rivers of leaking energy every day: in the United States, up to 30% of energy purchased for commercial buildings is wasted after the meter. This is an avoidable operating expense that also increases emissions. New tools like AI-powered intelligent controls and real-time analytics have the potential to fundamentally change that equation, enabling smart building systems to save energy in ways that were not previously possible.
I often compare AI in building operations to the autopilot in a commercial airliner. Wind, weather and other conditions can continually move a plane away from its intended flight path. The autopilot responds by making a series of small corrections that keep the aircraft on course. Each adjustment may be minor, but together they make an enormous difference.
Those same tiny changes, applied in the built environment, can compound into enormous energy savings. Tiny corrections, made continuously, can create dramatic improvements in the amount of energy a building requires.
For example, in commercial structures, the same building is often being heated and cooled at the same time because parts of the building may be facing the sun and away from the sun at the same time. With AI and digital tools, we can take data like the building layout, the equipment and occupancy levels, and combine it with information about things like weather forecasts or particulate matter in the air. Using that data, we can predict what a building will need and meet those needs in the most cost-effective way possible.
What if buildings were active, intelligent participants in our energy system? Storing energy, shifting loads, responding to changing energy prices and the weather, coordinating with utilities and supporting renewable integration. That future is here now.
We’re already seeing AI-enabled intelligent building management solutions that cut energy consumption by 15-25%. Solutions like these win on sustainability and economics simultaneously. And, the next generation of building operators won’t just use power — they’ll help manage it.
Buildings as batteries
Let’s take that a step beyond just reducing energy waste. What if buildings were active, intelligent participants in our energy system? Storing energy, shifting loads, responding to changing energy prices and the weather, coordinating with utilities and supporting renewable integration. That future is here now.
Look at a skyscraper. There are millions of them in cities around the world. Now, imagine that those towers of plate glass and concrete are, instead, giant batteries. With technologies like thermal energy storage, smart controls and grid-interactive batteries, buildings can coordinate and store energy when it’s cheapest and then use it or export it back to the grid when it’s most expensive.
Now, imagine that the surrounding buildings are talking to each other, working together as needs change. The hospital with the sunny exposure that becomes overheated around 3 PM is pre-cooling patient rooms and operating theaters early in the day while energy is inexpensive, while the office building that’s shaded at that same time is shutting off the lights and HVAC in unused conference rooms, reducing its energy use and freeing up grid capacity.
Those may seem like futuristic ideas, but the technology that we need to make this a reality is here today. For example, in Utah’s Salt Lake City region, grid-interactive efficient buildings are helping to coordinate energy use, turning the network of structures into a flexible energy resource.
The future is closer than we think
Twenty years ago, companies digitized operations. Now, we’re digitizing buildings. The smart building of the future will predict energy needs in real time and balance energy use automatically while coordinating directly with the grid. It will learn occupancy patterns and monitor equipment to help predict and prevent failures. It will manage carbon and costs and continuously improve its operations.
People play a critical role in this equation. While technology can identify opportunities, people must provide the expertise, context and oversight to turn those insights into real-world outcomes. The future of building performance won’t just depend on innovation alone, but on technology and human judgment working together.
The next breakthrough is already built
The next breakthrough may not arrive as a dramatic scientific discovery. It may emerge from millions upon millions of existing buildings becoming smarter, more connected and adaptive. If we integrate intelligent operations into our built environment, incremental improvements can become transformational outcomes.
At scale, this has the potential to reduce energy use, emissions and the need for new power infrastructure. The future is not just about what we build next. It’s about how well we optimize the trillions of dollars’ worth of infrastructure that we already have. Our greatest energy asset isn’t waiting to be constructed. It’s waiting to be upgraded.
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