An $80 billion real estate company just named its first chief carbon officer. Here’s what he’ll do
An $80 billion real estate company just named its first chief carbon officer. Here’s what he’ll do ] The building industry is responsible for a huge amount of the carbon emitted into the atmosphere. One of the world’s biggest development companies now has a top-level official charged with figuring out how to bring those emissions down. advertisement advertisement Hines, the international real estate company with more than $80 billion in assets under management, has created a new role that could soon become common in the industry: chief carbon officer. “My sole focus, 100%, is carbon emissions,” says Michael Izzo, who was recently appointed to inaugurate the role, officially known as Hines’s vice president of carbon strategy. Formerly a vice president of construction for Hines, Izzo is now creating a company-wide strategy for reducing carbon emissions in its new construction and renovation projects around the world, including towers in New York and Shanghai, and in Bangalore, India. It’s a notable move for a company like Hines and for the real estate development industry in general, which is increasingly coming to terms with the climate impacts of both the operation of its buildings and the resources required to build them, known as embodied carbon. ...