Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
We interview sustainability leaders across industries to learn what they are working on and how they are steering their companies toward a climate-friendly world.
Voiceover - 00:00:10:
Welcome to Open Source Sustainability. On this show, Alex Lassiter, CEO of Greenplaces, talks with sustainability leaders to learn how companies are adapting their business models to be in line with sustainability goals. We believe sustainability has to be open source to be successful, and these leaders have offered us a glimpse inside their strategies and the hopes that we can all move forward together. We are fascinated by some of the unique challenges these sustainability leaders face and are excited to dive deeper. In this episode, Alex is talking with JP Flaherty, the Global Head of Sustainability and Building Technology Innovation at Tishman Speyer, a significant player in the global real estate landscape. They're delving into Tishman's sustainability journey, unraveling the strategies behind managing colossal structures like the iconic 200 Park Avenue. From navigating decarbonization challenges to meeting investor demands and adapting to regulatory shifts, JP provides a behind-the-scenes look at Tishman's sustainable practices. Join us on this exploration of real estate's green odyssey, where technology, investor expectations, and evolving regulations converge.
Alex Lassiter - 00:01:23:
All right. Hey, JP, thank you for joining today on the Open Source Sustainability Podcast. We're very excited to have you.
JP Flaherty - 00:01:29:
Thanks, Alex, for having me.
Alex Lassiter - 00:01:32:
So I guess let's start off with, tell us a little bit about your role at Tishman and we can start there. Sure.
JP Flaherty - 00:01:38:
So I'm our global head of sustainability and building technology innovation. So two related roles that the one that sort of takes most of my time is being the global out of sustainability. And that includes sort of all of our energy, carbon, and everything related to, broad package of data on the environmental, social, and governance side. And then, you know, all sorts of projects that we do around the world just inspires both the builder and an owner of buildings. So we work with all those individual projects, individual assets and buildings to do any number of things, whether that be retrofits or, you know, data management or working with the tenants in the buildings, the questions they have about their performance and their environmental footprint. So it kind of spans the gamut.
Alex Lassiter - 00:02:22:
So Tishman and correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe is the. Largest building owner in the United States and one of the largest in the world. Is that right?
JP Flaherty - 00:02:34:
Second part's true. First part, we're not the largest in the US, but we're one of the larger ones. And so the other thing is we tend to own very large buildings. So our total per footage is quite high, even though the number of buildings we own is not as high as you might imagine. But we tend to own a lot of very, very, very large buildings. So I mean, in New York City. You know, 200 Park, 200 Park Avenue, sorry, that we own is 3 million square feet. These are just gigantic buildings. We just opened a brand new building in Hudson Yards called The Spiral that's 2.8 million square feet. So those two buildings alone in New York are almost 6 million square feet. There are whole companies that have hundreds of buildings that have 6 million square feet. And we have two in New York that are 6 million square feet together. So I just give that in the context of a kind of defense on how you count, right? From a square footage standpoint, we're quite large. From an individual number of buildings we own, it's a smaller number than you might think, given the square footage is very large.
Alex Lassiter - 00:03:26:
So that's quite about a responsibility when you think about, you know, decarbonizing the, you know, the built environment. I mean, this is an absolutely huge footprint. So when you think about really doing this, this is, this is pretty significant portion of of office space that you're sort of guiding and trying to strategically think about. How we can operate in a way that's, you know, less at odds with the environment.
JP Flaherty - 00:03:51:
Absolutely. And, you know, part of the challenge we face is that none of our buildings, although they all look, well, not all, but they often look alike from the outside, big, tall rectangles. What's going on inside can be very, very different. And so, you know, the 200 Park example there. And this is going to be a unique outlier, but just as we brought it up, it's fun to use it as an example. You know, 200 Park Avenue, all of the heating and cooling in the building is provided by steam. So that's, you know, how do you decarbonize that, right? And, oh, by the way, just to add to the fun, because 200 Park Avenue is built on top of Grand Central Station, all of the mechanical equipment is at the very top floor, not the bottom. And so to get a chiller or to replace a chiller or do any of that, you've got to go in pieces in the freight elevator to 58. So none of this is easy.
Alex Lassiter - 00:04:40:
So taking a step back in your career, I mean, how did you get yourself into this position? What was the, what was the buildup of your career to the point, you know, at what you are today?
JP Flaherty - 00:04:48:
Sure. Well, you know, often people ask different way of asking that question is how how can I get your job right? Like what how did you and you know, funny thing I will say about that. Just thinking broadly about people's career arcs is that had I made it my goal to get this job, I never would have gotten this job. Meaning life's all about. The world taking you in unexpected places. And so I came to work at Just Inspire 15 years ago in the management training program as an intern and then went on to join full-time. My first role company was in our residential division and I eventually went on to do things in asset management and portfolio management. And about three years in, I moved into our sustainability group. But I was one of a number of folks there. And I had a very strong interest in that and I had a lot of knowledge about it, but it was not what my degree was in and it was not necessarily the reason why I joined the company. But given the opportunity to be in the sustainability group, I quickly kind of fell in love with all of it. And that was 11, 12 years ago now. I think that the big interesting reason is, well, not big, but one of the many reasons why the company put me in that role was that we have, and we did at the time, have many, many, many very smart folks on how we could run buildings better and be more energy efficient. The challenge in my role is it's a lot more than that. And a lot of it is understanding how the company works and how budgets work and how leases work and how escalations within leases work so that you can really drive actual change. You can have all the great ideas in the world, but if you can't get it into a budget for a building, then it's never going to happen. And so the actual sort of bureaucratic mechanical pieces of how the company works, you can't ignore those. And so most of the people that have a job like mine tend to be very political folk within a company. And I don't obviously mean politics in the traditional sense, but just more, you got to know everybody and know how the company works and how money moves and how we actually make money and how budgets work and how you can drive those changes within the sort of framework that you're working with. Because again, just having great ideas and being like, let's do it is not actually going to create those outcomes.
Alex Lassiter - 00:06:50:
Interesting. I feel like that's a common thread that we hear a lot in sustainability professionals, which is The ideas are there. That's not the hard part. The hard part isn't figuring out what we need to do. The hard part is figuring out how this business accomplishes it.
JP Flaherty - 00:07:04:
Yeah, and I think that's exactly right, right? I don't think the interesting thing about the building decarbonization sort of efforts, broadly speaking, is that we do have a known and understood pathway. There are, there is not a magic new machine that needs to be invented to create the outcomes that we're looking for here. And that doesn't mean technological change isn't super important. And if you look at things like building all electric buildings, you know, it's still a little bit too cold in Boston to build an all electric lab building. So that's not to say there isn't a better box to be built. Every year, those heat pump manufacturers are making it one to two percent better in cold weather. And that's eventually going to get you to an all electric building in Boston. But Boston is a cold market. There's a lot of warm market. We're building all electric lab buildings in San Diego right now. So the point broadly being that the pathways are understood, the technology is basically there. It's a matter of making the numbers line up and then executing that. And, you know, again, there isn't a magic silver bullet that needs to be invented. It's also one of the reasons why real estate is under greater pressure than a lot of other industries to decarbonize, because folks rightfully see our industry and say there is a path. So it may not be perfectly economical, but there is a pathway. The technology does exist. That is not true, and many other sectors of the economy. There are no good answers in agriculture. There are no good answers in all sorts of other sectors, or at least not viable economic answers that do not require some significant new thing to be invented.
Alex Lassiter - 00:08:35:
And how long has this been a priority at Tishman? I know, like you said, you didn't start necessarily in this place, but it worked into it. But how long has Tishman been thinking, you know, pretty formally around sustainability? I mean, I know y'all are pretty far along as it is today, but when did this begin?
JP Flaherty - 00:08:51:
Well, I mean, I started in the group 12 years ago and we had already had a sustainability group for many years. So the answer is a long time. There are a couple of reasons for that. One is Tishman Speyer always has been an owner operator, which means we run our own buildings in the United States. And in many other markets, just not every single market globally. But what that means is we bring an operator mindset to these buildings. And that means we want to save energy. We've been, you know, as the gentleman who know, our work share, but often would joke, we, you know, we were green before anybody had any idea what that meant. And what we cared about was the green dollars we were saving at the other end from using less energy. Right. So 10, 12 years ago, the focus on energy efficiency wasn't carbon. Right. But it was let's use less energy because it costs a lot. And so the focus on resource production and better operations came from being an owner operator. That being said, that was always about increasing NOI, decreasing energy consumption and running the buildings as best as possible. Obviously, with a carbon lens today, there's a lot more to that story. And the journey you take to reduce energy consumption and or carbon can be very different in very different scenarios. But at the end of the day, Tishman Speyer really was focused on this many, many moons ago. Maybe just not with a carbon lens. And the only thing I would add also is the other big reason is we've tended over the years to raise a good deal of the equity for the business from large European pools of equity, life insurance company, pension funds, sovereign wealth vehicles, whatever that might be. And our European friends have been much more focused on this than potentially the Americans for a long time. And so when we've raised money from, you call it a big Swedish pension fund, the kinds of things they're looking for are these kinds of things, of course, after return. And so we've had a opportunity to really focus on these matters, again, a lot earlier than others because of a combination of both where that equity is coming from and being a true owner-owner.
Alex Lassiter - 00:10:43:
So, I feel like that's an interesting point because I think a lot of folks who may not be as involved in the space might wonder where does the drivers come from? And, you know, there's obviously general market awareness amongst people and how folks view the responsibility of corporations. But that investor lens is a really interesting one because that can actually significantly move decisions and it can make something that maybe wasn't nice to have like a requirement. So are you feeling, you know, as you look out into the next, you know, 5, 10, 20 years, is that going away? Is that a blip? Or is this going to be a part of the cost of capital?
JP Flaherty - 00:11:24:
It's part of the cost of capital going forward. And in fact, I would tell you, you know, if you'd asked me five years ago where I thought the competing pressures would be in the business today, I would have guessed it would have been regulators, tenants, investors. And instead it ended up being investors, investors, investors. Regulation is there, but it has proven to be much less of the relevant driver of real change. And that's not to knock any of our colleagues in government. It's just that hasn't proven to be nearly as effective as the money talk, right? And so the investor side and the equity side in particular. Has just been much, much more focused than we would have imagined. Tenants care, but not nearly as much as the equity cares. And I think what's really interesting about that, if you kind of try to think about why that might be, a lot of that is because real estate just has very long hold periods, right? So people tend to buy real estate and hold it for 8 to 15 years. And just as a set of, you know, of timeframes. And the problem that... In very long lived investment cycles you have is. When we raise money for a 10-year real estate fund, we need to tell those folks that we're raising money from that we have a real plan in 10 years to make that money, right? And not obviously to make improvements to the building, but also to sell the building to the next owner. And so. The deal here is that when you're playing in those kinds of timeframes, and these are sophisticated investors, they look and say, well, great, we do a deal with you right now in 2023, and we're going to look to sell that asset. It's going to be 2032, right? What's the world going to look like in 2032? Well, probably a lot different than today. And it's safe bet to say that the focus on energy and carbon is only going up in the future. And so those books are asking like, what's your plan? Like how are you going to, you know, navigate that over a 10 year timeframe. And again, if you and I sat in the way back machine and went back to 2013 and said, what's it going to look like in 2023, we would have all gotten it very wrong across a whole bunch of things. So like, and certainly where it would have ended up on this. I think that's a really interesting challenge in the past real estate didn't need to worry as much about that. Right. You know, you can kind of assume that. Office demand in 2013, you could extrapolate to say Office demand in 2023 would be more and probably, anyway, lots of things you could have assumed and you would have been wrong on all. So it's very hard to gauge how that's going to play out in these very long timeframes. And so those investors want to make sure that you're thinking about that and protecting their value in that very long timeframe.
Alex Lassiter - 00:13:56:
I never really thought about it in terms of the length of the investment, but that makes total sense. And to be able to, you know, speak confidently about what your plan is in this scenario versus this scenario, you got to think about workforce mobility, where people live, where people work. All of those things all play into that, which makes it a really challenging problem.
JP Flaherty - 00:14:15:
Absolutely. And what does the grid look like in 2030?
Alex Lassiter - 00:14:17:
Yeah.
JP Flaherty - 00:14:18:
Right? Because if we choose to take a building in New York, like the example I gave of Twitter Park, it's all steam. Like, you know, many folks would tell you the answer is you have to electrify everything. Okay, well, fine. Let's assume that we have to do that. Right now in New York City, the electrical grid's 99% gas fired. So it doesn't make much sense to electrify buildings when all you're doing is using more energy that was generated from fossil fuels. Right? So you got to guess. Well, the government tells you that the grid in New York is going to be 50% renewable by 2030. Maybe it will be, maybe it won't, right? I don't know. I mean, there's a law in the books in New York that says that's the law, but if they don't hit that, nobody goes to jail, right? So like, how do we gauge what the future looks like and what indicators do we have? But back to the point about decarbonizing, like in many cases, that's gonna be electrification. It makes little sense to do that if the grid isn't actually delivering renewable energy.
Alex Lassiter - 00:15:11:
Mm hmm. Now, do y'all, you know, as such a significant landlord, do you do you play in that arena? Do you do you get to participate in some of these regulatory conversations around, hey, this is something that, you know, we really care about? I mean, is there is that dialogue? Does that dialogue happen?
JP Flaherty - 00:15:28:
Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, where I was on two of the local 97 New York City working groups, you know, we don't or I don't want to say we don't, but I don't want to give the impression this is lobbying. Like, that's not to say that there isn't lobbying going on, but as it relates to all these matters, this is where we are helping the city of New York and city of San Francisco and other governmental agencies try to understand some of the challenges. They're very smart folk, but they don't own three million square foot office buildings. They don't know necessarily what the challenges are. And so we very much get involved in the governmental decision making and rule making processes, to help make sure that those folks understand what are our challenges. But we're not different than anybody else in that regard, right? So, you know, how can we show you how this is going to work or not work in a building? And so we really want to be as helpful as possible and make sure that folks who are writing those rules and regulations understand how buildings really work and what's going to work and what's not.
Alex Lassiter - 00:16:26:
It's interesting to think, you know, if you go back to, you know, the 60s movement around, you know, environment and, you know, kind of the push away from. You know, building and just like money and all of that type of stuff and come back and say, look, well, actually, the way if you have a fortune teller that this is going to be solved is through investment dollars. And it's funny to just kind of watch how capitalism ends up solving the problems that we associate with climate change. Well, it's a really it's I would not have bet on that. And I would love to bet on that either.
JP Flaherty - 00:17:00:
Right. And it's funny.
Alex Lassiter - 00:17:01:
Yeah. I mean, I love it. But I would never thought if-
JP Flaherty - 00:17:03:
You think about like. The US has had a significant, not even close to enough, but significant reduction in the economy-wide carbon footprint. And that's been, sure, efficiency played a huge role, LEDs, you can name a bunch of things. But the number one driver by far was switching from coal to natural gas in the electrical generation area. And none of that was driven by a law, right? It was driven by technological change. And how we drill for gas, and then the gas being far superior to coal in an actual power generation basis, and then also the rest of the world waking up to that and the huge possibilities of exporting that gas across the world. All of those things were driven by technology and by price signals in goods that we already trade like natural gas and coal, and such in a way that, you know, we've taken half the coal plants offline in the United States in the last 20 years. Nobody would have ever guessed that was going to happen because of the price of gas, right, to your point. And so it was not regulatory action. It was, you know, changes in technology, changes in economic flows that really drove it. I will say the interesting flip to that is that Europe didn't experience any of those things because they don't have big gas reserves and they didn't burn a lot of coal to begin with. They've seen proportional declines in their carbon footprint over the same period of time. They very much went the regulatory approach. And in the United States, or put it even simpler way, they went with sticks and we went with carrots, right? And what's interesting is that at the end of the day, 20 years later, the outcome has been roughly the same. Now, I know I'll get reminded on plenty of folks who listen to this say, no, no, no, no, no. But I mean, as a broad matter, that is actually true. And so it's pretty interesting to think about, like, what is that, you know, not to say that the US approach would have worked in Europe nor the reverse, right? But like, it has very much been a market-driven carrot system in the U.S. Than anything else.
Alex Lassiter - 00:19:03:
Well, and that the cover of the cover story of The Economist this week was, I think it mentioned $2 trillion worth of green subsidies coming on the market to be able to help facilitate, you know, these transition paths to, you know, lower carbon and, you know, electrification. And that's, those are carrots. Like those are ways where, you know, savvy business owners can look at to be able to actually finance these decisions and make it profitable.
JP Flaherty - 00:19:29:
Yeah.
Alex Lassiter - 00:19:30:
So it's interesting because as more of these things happen, I'm curious because obviously Tishman was an early mover here for lots of reasons. But now with everything else kind of coming, do you feel like you've, you've. You feel like you've made it harder for other similar businesses in New York and the markets that you're in to say, Tishman's doing this. We need to do this too. Have you felt some of that pull in the market of, at this point, everyone needs to be on board? What kind of pressure do you see there?
JP Flaherty - 00:19:59:
Yeah. I mean, I think that, look, one of the funny things about sustainability and carbon energy, broadly speaking, is that it isn't as much as we consider it to be a competitive advantage that we're good at this and we know how to do this and we know how to retrofit buildings around buildings. Well, It's an advantage, but it's not one we're trying to keep from others, right? And it's not something that you can really keep secret in the sense that like, it's not some magic box that only I have, right? It's just a question of how we put the pieces together to create the right outcome, right? So everybody's eventually going to have to do the same broad set of things in buildings. Like we've just figured out financially how to make that happen, maybe more rapidly or quickly or efficiently than others. But it's not secret sauce, right? It's, and I say that in the context of the fact that almost everybody else that has my job in companies that we consider competitors or peers. We know all of each other very well. Nobody's trying to hide anything. In fact, just the opposite. They're trying to show everybody how that you could actually do many of these things. Because the reality is it's not so easy to do if only because it involves real money and moving real machinery and moving walls and delivering things and ordering things and year long, you know, ordering cycles and a number of things. So even if you owned a building, Alex, that looked exactly like one that we had and I had done X, Y, Z, and you were like, I want to do X, Y, Z, right? It'd take you three years, right? So it's not like it's something that, you know, so therefore in this space, people have been very open to sharing and very open to sort of talking about how they're doing it and why they're doing it and what are the drivers and how the dollars move in ways that in a lot of other parts of our business, that's not really how we necessarily interact with competitors. But on the sustainability side, it has been very much the case that it has been kind of an open book for everybody to see. And just to give a little preview of something that's going to come out in the coming months is we have a, there's a program in New York called the Empire Building Challenge, which is something funded by NYSERDA, which is a state agency in New York that focuses on energy efficiency. And one of the things that they in the Empire Building Challenge are trying to do is drive to buildings, creating duplicatable retrofit packages that can then be used by others. And so one of our buildings in Midtown Manhattan, 520 Madison. Has received an ABC award and it is for a decent chunk of change to help cost share for a geothermal installation under the building. And so that's an example of where it's, so why does the state of New York giving us money to do that? Obviously it's a good idea, and decreasing the carbon footprint of that building is in everybody's interest, but they're not giving us that money for that reason. They're giving us that money because they want us to help them create replicatable projects and packages for others to be able to do in the future.
Alex Lassiter - 00:22:45:
I love that, I mean, that's the impetus of this podcast and mission of our business that, that, into that was this idea that if Tishman succeeds in sustainability, but nobody else does, what was it all for? Like, you can't get there without everybody.
JP Flaherty - 00:23:03:
Exactly.
Alex Lassiter - 00:23:04:
So we've got to share these best practices. We've got to share the strategies and we've got to share the playbooks. I love that.
JP Flaherty - 00:23:09:
Yeah. And I think it's exactly the kind of thing that the government should be putting their money behind because-
Alex Lassiter - 00:23:14:
Exactly.
JP Flaherty - 00:23:14:
They want to help folks. And in the case of this project, people know how to do geothermal. It's not that. It's that people don't generally know how to do geothermal under an existing giant office building, right? And so in this case, again, it's sort of a kind of piece of the technology, but it's also just how'd you put the baggage together? How'd you actually do it? Who is doing it? Who's drilling those holes? Like, how is that actually going to work?
Alex Lassiter - 00:23:39:
And I think it removes some of the fear from people to say this world-class, you know, operator has been able to do this and they've worked out the kinks and they can show us how. And for us, you know, I can now look to an example. I don't have that to layer on to say, well, I can't do that because no one's ever done it.
JP Flaherty - 00:23:56:
Yep.
Alex Lassiter - 00:23:57:
Now no one can say that. That's amazing. That's really, really cool.
JP Flaherty - 00:24:00:
So that's the kind of thing we're looking for. But it goes back to the point also of like, we're not trying to hide anything, right? This is not. That being said, I want to be clear. We definitely think about it as a competitive advantage, right? And we want to own that space all day, but it's not something that I'm keeping from everybody else, right? It's more just how can we try to share that, have the best impact possible within our business, but also with our customers and then outside of that crowd as well.
Alex Lassiter - 00:24:24:
Now, on that same, on that same vein. You're the landlord for tons and tons of businesses who exist as tenants in your buildings. And I understand this from knowing you, but you do a fair amount of helping them figure this stuff out as well. So talk to me a little bit about the relationship with tenants and what you're seeing in terms of interest level and questions amongst the law firms and the accounting firms and the services companies, financial service, all these businesses that house employees in your buildings.
JP Flaherty - 00:24:59:
Well, first of all, I would say that the spectrum is quite large as to the knowledge and sophistication on the tenant side. And it is not necessarily correlated to size of tenant or size of company in the sense that, so for example, at Rockefeller Center, the largest tenant is NBC and NBC Studios are here as well. NBC is one of the most sophisticated operators. They have huge facilities footprint all over the United States. They don't need our help. They need to work with us because they're in the buildings and they have television studios and sound studios and specialized equipment of all varieties. And we work with them very closely. But they're sort of on the far side of they don't need help. We just need to coordinate with them and their facilities teams to make sure that their critical systems run. And we're talking about N plus whatever, three, four, meaning their reliability standards for their television studios are far beyond anything that anybody else is doing. In any regular way, they're playing a very sophisticated game. And then we have tenants that are doing nothing, right? And we have a full spectrum in between. Large is not necessarily the driver. As you pointed out, you have some industries that are just by nature, not as quick movers and have an N good example of that as law firms, as you pointed out. Law firms are not poverty cases. They make a lot of money and there tend to be enormously profitable enterprises. But for a lot of interesting reasons, sustainability isn't necessarily something that's been high on their radar. A lot of that is because they don't really have a consumer brand presence. Most people, unless you're a lawyer, don't really know the names of big law firms. And they haven't had the same kind of pressures on hiring, meaning like over the years, historically, without getting into any great detail about law, you know, there's a lot of lawyers, and so the law firms haven't necessarily had to fight for the best talent. In certain specific ways. I'm sure they fight for talent all the time. I don't mean it that way, but just, you know, you don't see them saying, like many big tech firms have said, like, if we don't do these things, we don't hire the best people. That has not been the message coming out of law firms, right? And so between not necessarily having a consumer-oriented facing and then not having been as sophisticated on that larger side, you end up with firms that they've got a lot of, they've got a lot of resources and they've got a lot of interested people, but they haven't put that together into a real plan. And I give that as an example, just because I think people in their mind might say, well, big tenants do it and small tenants don't. And as I mentioned earlier, it's kind of all over the place. It's not really about big or small. It's about the particular sector, the type of company that it is, what they're and, and it gets into all sorts of interesting, how much the CEO cares. There's all sorts of factors that go into. How much a tenant has gone down that journey? Right? And so, again, we have some tenants. Deloitte has their North American headquarters here at Rock Center. Incredibly sophisticated. They know what they're doing. They don't need, I mean, other people hire them to figure out their carbon footprint, right? So they're not looking to us to tell them their carbon footprint. On the other hand, you know, I had, Rock Center has. Probably 500 small tenants. I'm making that number up on a lot. And many of them have not started on that journey at all. So it's really all over the place. The big tenants come or the tenants that have started very far down that journey, we help them in all sorts of ways, but it tends to be on the pretty sophisticated side. When folks come and tell us help, we don't know how to start. That's when we look to other options. We can't really help folks. We can kind of, we'll give you the data, we'll point you in the right direction, but we're not a consulting company, right? We're a real estate company. And so we can help folks begin to go down that journey and we can help you think about it. And we have a whole package of services we'd love to, you know, talk to you about, but it's not the core basis of what we're talking about today. And it certainly isn't what you and your team are working on.
Alex Lassiter - 00:28:53:
One of the things that we hear a lot from businesses that traditional companies that are trying to figure out how to begin is I'm a tenant in a bigger building and I can't get to my electricity. I can't get to my gas. I don't know how much water I have. I just I pay rent. And that's what it is. But I know we've had this conversation previously. That's a place where Tishman wants to help.
JP Flaherty - 00:29:19:
Oh, yeah. To be able to help give them that. A hundred percent. We want to empower people with that data all day in every way. And in most markets, the one thing I would say, and you and I have had, again, chatted about this, but it's very market to market in terms of sort of what is standard in an office building. And virtually everybody in New York City is sub-metered so that they can get their data exactly. In D.C., almost nobody is sub-metered just because of the nature of the real estate market and the types of leases written. That being said, whenever the technology exists, we'll use it to give you the most accurate data we have. And if you want truly accurate data, for example, in a market where sub-metering is not common, but we need to really know, we'll go put a meter in, right? So we'll work with our tenants to make sure that they have the absolute highest quality data possible. And look, some tenants maybe aren't as interested in that, meaning they want the data, but it doesn't need to be perfect, right? And so if it doesn't need to be perfect, well, then maybe we shouldn't spend the money on that meter. We'll estimate until for a year or two or three and estimate, meaning I know the total. And I know the data, I know you rent 20% of the building, so I'm going to give you 20% of the total. It's not that I'm making the number up. It's just, I don't know exactly your total, but I can guess based on the amount of space you occupy. But maybe then it makes sense the next time we renew your lease that we'll work some upgrades into the space, including working a meter into that. And then it won't have any real impact or cost down the road.
Alex Lassiter - 00:30:43:
Yeah, I love that. And I know we've talked about being able to get that information through a partnership with green places and being able to pull that in so that people can have that visibility, get started, meet these customer requirements. Because, you know, obviously, as we know, like there's going to be, take law firms, for example, there's going to be folks always that are going to be leaning really heavily into anything. And then there's a lot of folks that need to do this because they want to be good stewards. They want to do what their clients are asking. They want to do what the, you know, their employees feel is the right thing to do. And they want to make sure they're doing it right. Are they trying to be the market leader in greenest law firms? Maybe not. But they want to get started.
JP Flaherty - 00:31:25:
Right.
Alex Lassiter - 00:31:25:
And that's OK.
JP Flaherty - 00:31:26:
We want everybody to just get started.
Alex Lassiter - 00:31:29:
Exactly. That is the thread that I hear in almost every conversation we have with folks daily is. I'd like to do this. I don't know where to get started.
JP Flaherty - 00:31:39:
Yeah. And, you know, that's why our partnership is, I think, a great way for us to begin to point people in that direction, because the platform you offer really can help folks. Get going in a much more rapid fashion than they would be able to do so if they did anything but hire a professional services firm to help.
Alex Lassiter - 00:31:59:
So what is one thing, and I always like to ask this for guests, because you've got, you have such a complicated job. You've got a million different types of buildings. You've got tenants who have some control over things, some control not. You've got old buildings, new buildings. You've got all kinds of stuff. What do you think is one of the... What is something about your job or sustainability at Tishman that you wish... Your tenants or just the general public would know that that may not. Like, what's like a weird challenge that you have to cross that most people just don't even conceptualize that you deal with?
JP Flaherty - 00:32:36:
Sure. Well, I mean, the number one one in that book, but I have a better answer than this potentially, is just trying to navigate the fact that we're in 12 countries, eight states, and the just myriad of different ways, the regulatory frameworks, but also even just the way people think about it. When you say net zero in Paris, it just means something very different to the United States. And never mind what that means in Frankfurt or what that means in London or what that means in Singapore or Seoul or Tokyo. And so I'm trying, we raise money globally. And so you'd think that carbon is a global phenomenon. Carbon is no different in this market than in Germany, right? But how people talk about it, how they regulate it, how they report on it is just very different across the world and that different, for example, funny example of that. Hmm, you will often hear that the Europeans are way ahead, and in many, many aspects, they are. But one way where we have trouble is in the United States, for example, I have 100% data coverage, which means I have real data for all my buildings across all my tenants. It may only come annually. Ideally, it comes daily or whatever, but in some markets and in some complicated situation areas, man, maybe I only get it once a year. But I can say at the end of the year, I know exactly what happened in all of our buildings across the United States with no estimation of all energy consumption. In Germany, I can never say that because there are very strict laws. That cover tenant electrical information and loads. And so when a tenant moves into a building in Germany, they have their own relationship with the utility. I have no ability to get that data. And so in Europe, when you generally hear landlords being told to be net zero or whatever it might be, they actually mean landlord only. The tenant loads are like the tenant's problem. And I don't even get to see them. And I have no legal right to do so. I just have to ask the tenant nicely and hopefully they share. In the US, couldn't be more different, right? That's not how it goes. Governments assume that if you own the building, it's your responsibility across the entire building and all of the tenants to deliver those changes or whatever that might be. And so that alone creates completely different ways you approach the problem in Germany versus the United States. And it's that level of multi-market complexity that actually makes things pretty complicated, especially because we'll raise money in Sweden from a pension fund to invest in US assets, right? And so that the Swedes expect things to be one way, the US is doing it a different way. And so they're like, how is this happening? And I'm like, well, you know, turns out that's a complicated problem. Let's talk about it, right? But that is my number one day in and day out problem. Corollary to that is, you know, net zero. Again, I'll have people in the company come along and say, well, you know, that's net zero, right? And I'm like, I mean, the US definition, yes, right? But the Swedes would say that looks like a dirty asset to them, right? And so how do you kind of balance all that? And then, you know, most people don't know those nuances. And so the next thing you know, you're trying to explain that to, you know, the head of the region in, you know, San Diego to say, this thing that doesn't make a lot of sense in San Diego is really important to the Swedes. And they own your building, as it turns out. So that's how that's going to happen.
Alex Lassiter - 00:36:02:
It's interesting. It's sort of a second layer of translation that makes these market dynamics even more complex. The last question I'll ask would be, if you had a, you've got your tenants, right? And you've got folks that are very far ahead, you know, the Deloitte and NBC. But for everybody else who's trying to navigate, this is something that I'm starting to feel like I need to do, but I'm nervous about. Beginning, what's your recommendation? What do you, what is the, what is the, what would you say to those folks?
JP Flaherty - 00:36:35:
Look, I think it's much easier to start than you think. And all that you really need to do. And, and. I guess I'm sounding... Completely obvious here, but what you really need is your data, right? To understand where you sit. So the starting of the journey is just getting the data, which is a general matter shouldn't be that hard. And obviously Alex, you and your team are working to make sure it's as easy as possible, but that's where I think you have to start. That's obviously where you start on your platform. It's not a big lift. I mean, I'm not going to say that in 100% of the scenarios. There are certainly outliers where it actually is a big lift, but it's a small crowd. For most of the vast majority of tenants, getting that data isn't going to be impossible and frankly should be pretty easy. And then being able to go from there and really, you know, beginning to measure what you're doing. And that's all you have to do, right? Then you can begin to see trends. You can begin to see changes you could make, but none of that is relevant or possible if you can't measure it. And so the number one thing to do is to start measuring that data or collecting that data or whatever the case might be. And so it's not nearly as big of a lift as you might think. And you can't set things like a target until you understand how much you're using. And so we want people to set targets and move towards reductions in the future. The only way to do that is to build a data set of the actual performance of your physical spaces. And you know, it's not that hard. And that's certainly in it. And to the extent that it looks intimidating and it can be, there's, there's lots of ways to do it. And certainly one we would point to is to work with you, Alex, and your team to make that happen.
Alex Lassiter - 00:38:12:
I think that's great advice. You know, you can't improve what you can't measure. And I think that's great advice. Well, JP, thank you so much for joining the podcast today. Sincerely appreciate it. I certainly learned a lot.
JP Flaherty - 00:38:24:
Yeah, great chat.
Alex Lassiter - 00:38:26:
Yeah, you got a lot of responsibility in your shoulders and best of luck. And thanks again for joining today.
JP Flaherty - 00:38:31:
You bet. And I know we'll be talking soon. So thanks a lot.
Voiceover - 00:38:34:
Thank you to JP for joining us and thank you for listening. If you like this show, be sure to leave a review and follow this podcast wherever you like to listen so you don't miss an episode. This podcast is powered by Greenplaces. If you are looking to reduce your company's environmental impact and reach your sustainability goals, visit greenplaces.com to learn more. We'll talk with you next time on Open Source Sustainability.