Buildings account for 40% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, and digital twins could be an effective tool for reducing their energy consumption and emissions.
A white paper from the Digital Twin Consortium
argues that performance-based digital twins are essential to reduce
carbon and carbon equivalents at every stage of a building's lifecycle,
including embodied emissions.
- Digital twins supported by smart building technology could predict and monitor a building's performance and identify ways to improve it.
- The lack of follow-through on ESG initiatives
has led to accusations of greenwashing, and the consortium aims to
provide a practical guide to reducing emissions through digital twins.
- Simply measuring a building's environmental impact won't be enough.
- Advanced digital twins with predictive tools are needed to find ways to improve performance and provide practical instructions.
- Each building will need multiple twins, and a digital thread is necessary to correlate the twins and other data sources over time.
- Interventions in existing assets can address embodied carbon, but reuse is often the best choice.
- The paper
recommends establishing the position of an owner's performance advocate
to manage the lifecycle of the digital building in parallel with the
owner's representative.
