Sustainability Street: Engineering CRE’s Low-Carbon Future

Fiona Cousins

Fiona Cousins, chair of the Americas for global engineering firm Arup, was part of the 16-member advisory board tasked with helping turn New York City’s behemoth Local Law 97 into a set of decarbonization procedures and performance standards that buildings owners could comply with. The board, along with a number of working groups, met for hundreds of hours over three years.

Welcome back to Sustainability Street, our podcast on the intersection of commercial real estate and the world we live in. In this episode, host CPE Executive Editor Therese Fitzgerald and Cousins discuss Local Law 97, the role of regulation vs. incentives in meeting carbon reduction goals, and the critical part engineers have to play in public policy.  “All these problems are, at the root, engineering problems,” Cousins observed.

Here’s a sample of the topics covered:

• Room for interpretation in Local Law 97 (1:38)
• Overcoming compliance challenges (3:28)
• Carrots or sticks or both? (8:57)
• The regulatory landscape in the U.S. and globally (12:37)
• Why the engineer’s voice is so important (19:10)