Brookfield Properties has announced that more than 65 percent of its office space will be shifted to zero-emissions electricity by 2024 and the remaining part will be powered over the following two years.
The company's decision is expected to reduce the total direct carbon emissions by approximately 80 percent from its U.S. portfolio. Brookfield's buildings will be powered by water, solar, wind and nuclear sources.
Last year, Brookfield announced that one of its Manhattan skyscrapers will be powered with renewable energy from upstate New York.
The step will not only help Brookfield achieve its energy goals but will also increase demand for renewable power, according to Ben Brown, Managing Partner at Brookfield Real Estate.
"Not only are we making the buildings greener, we're incentivizing further development of renewable power generation," Brown said. "Over the next couple of years, this will go from being a 'nice to have' and what people would like, to just a natural requirement."
The release does not detail how Brookfield will directly power operations with low- and zero-carbon generation resources. In the corporate world, some power purchase agreements act more as offsets for electricity use, working to match a facility’s energy footprint with an equal amount of clean energy enabled on the grid.
Brookfield Properties has more than 70 million square feet of office properties across the U.S. Most of those are in cities such as New York, Washington, Los Angeles and Denver.
Worldwide, the real estate firm owns more than 840 properties totaling more 300 million square feet of global commercial office space. Those include 27,000 multifamily units and 133 million square feet of global retail space.
Brookfield Properties develops and operates real estate investments on behalf of parent firm Brookfield Asset Management and Brookfield Corp.. The parent Brookfield holds more than $725 billion worth of assets under management.
