Most building leaders feel their organization is on track to achieve sustainability goals, according to an Atrius survey of over 200 industry professionals.
The 55% of respondents who said their organization is on track is an eight-percentage-point jump from the year prior, and tracks a decrease in the percent of those who either feel they are behind or “just getting started,” according to Atrius.
The 2024 survey data suggests organizations continue to prioritize sustainability, although “at a slower trajectory compared to previous years,” Atrius says.
“This slowdown may be due to delayed federal sustainability mandates and the changing political climate,” the company says, noting that as a result, teams might “focus more on reduction initiatives that drive both cost and carbon savings rather than for compliance and reporting, slowing overall progress in the next few months and years to come.”
Data management is a key component for teams working to improve the sustainability of their buildings, because the data can point to where they can save time and money, according to the report. But teams might not be collecting the data in the most efficient way.
“What’s surprising, slash, not surprising, is seeing that a lot of this data collection is still really manual,” Lauren Scott, vice president of marketing and sustainability of the intelligent spaces group at Acuity Brands, parent of Atrius, said in an interview. “If we think of sustainability teams, we know a lot of them are really lean, and so they're still relying on more of these traditional data-gathering opportunities.”
“On the flip side, what's making it even harder is that as buildings are becoming more and more intelligent, and having all these additional endpoints, it's just creating more data,” Scott said. That “can give us more rich information, but it does make it more complex when we're trying to sift through them.”
While 60% of organizations have centralized data management, 46% still rely on separate departmental management, which may hinder progress, Atrius says.
More than half still use manual methods like bill processing, and almost one-third use manual meter readings, according to the survey.
Looking ahead, Scott sees there is going to be a larger focus on supplier data. “Supplier pressure, or the customer pressure on their suppliers, will continue to move this forward, even in more of a tumultuous time period,” she said.
