The Future We Build

Alex Edds
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The Future We Build is a podcast about sustainability in real estate when it is shaped by innovation, investment, and real commercial decision making. Hosted by Alex Edds, a corporate sustainability innovator with over 20 years inside the industry, this podcast looks at sustainability through the lens of value creation, resilience, and human outcomes, not just carbon metrics. This is a show for people building, backing, and buying the next generation of solutions for the built environment, offering rare insight into how sustainability, innovation, and capital intersect in practice.

  1. 2 days ago

    The One With... the Team Who Mapped Every Barrier to Scaling Sustainability in Real Estate — UKGBC

    This episode is sponsored by MapMortar - the capital planning management tool that turns portfolio risk from a spreadsheet headache into a boardroom-ready capital plan in around 50% of the time and cost. Check out https://mapmortar.io — The built environment doesn't have an innovation problem. It has a scaling problem. Emily-Rose Garnett and Philippa Birch-Wood of the UK Green Building Council authored the report mapping why sustainable solutions in real estate keep dying in pilot. Alex — who once ran innovation inside a major property firm — recognised every barrier in it. The solutions we need mostly already exist. The problem is systemic, not technical: risk-averse cultures, a certification catch-22 that starves materials innovators, and pilots never designed to scale. In this episode:→ Why the sector's problem is scaling and adoption, not a lack of ideas→ The certification catch-22 blocking low-carbon materials→ The funding gap that kills hardware innovators between pilot and manufacture→ Demand aggregation, collaborative pilots and collective insetting as fixes→ Who should lead — developers, the big advisory firms, or networks→ Whether the AI budget scramble is slowing everything else down Timestamps:[00:05:00] Not short of solutions — short of scaling[00:07:00] The seven barrier categories[00:11:00] The vicious circle blocking materials innovation[00:16:00] Demand aggregation and low-carbon concrete[00:18:00] The real pace of change in real estate[00:22:00] 20 years in real estate and never meeting[00:33:00] Where do JLL and CBRE actually sit?[00:41:00] Dropping "positive disruptors" into design teams[00:52:00] How AI budgets slow every other decision[01:01:00] Magic wand: consistency and sharing what fails Organisations Mentioned UK Green Building Council (UKGBC) Innovate UK ESBEM — Emergent Sustainable Built Environment Materials innovation network Accelerating Concrete Decarbonisation Group FORE Partnership Breakthrough Energy 2150 JLL CBRE Cushman & Wakefield LaSalle Investment Management MapMortar (episode sponsor) Reports & Tools Mentioned Scaling Sustainable Solutions for the Built Environment: Barriers & Enablers (UKGBC)Commercial Retrofit Innovation Map (UKGBC)UKGBC Solutions & Innovation Advisory GroupInnovate UK ESBEM UKGBC Solutions Library The Future We Build is a podcast exploring sustainability, innovation and systemic change in the built environment, hosted by Alex Edds. New episodes released weekly. Recorded at Podcast Rooms. With thanks to the production team at Atalor. Follow the Show and connect with Alex LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-future-we-buildLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexedds More About Our Guests Emily-Rose Garnett — Senior Advisor, Solutions & Innovation, UKGBC. LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/emily-rose-garnett-381943109Philippa Birch-Wood — Head of Climate Action, UKGBC. Profile: ukgbc.org/our-teamOrganisation: UK Green Building Council — ukgbc.org

    The One With... the Team Who Mapped Every Barrier to Scaling Sustainability in Real Estate — UKGBC

  2. 29 Jul

    The One With... the QS Who Went All In On AI

    If AI has only made us 20% faster in five years, James Garner calls that abject failure. Everyone in the built environment is talking about AI. Very little of that conversation is about what people are actually doing with it today. James Garner has spent 20 years as a quantity surveyor and now leads AI and data at Gleeds. He sits on the RICS panel that wrote the profession's new AI standard, and hosts Project Flux. This conversation is about practice, not projection — where AI is genuinely changing decisions, and where the industry is quietly kidding itself. In this episode: → Why the real picture of AI adoption is "jagged" — brilliant and broken inside the same firm→ The capability gap: everyone has the tools, almost nobody has the skill→ Why shaving 20% off a process misses the point entirely→ Cutting 10% off a building's carbon vs asking whether you need the building at all→ The RICS AI standard, broken into four plain-English parts→ Where your agency actually sits when frontier labs are becoming empires→ A half-hour exercise anyone can do today to make better decisions Timestamps: [00:01:00] Twenty years a QS — and a 1990s dissertation on digitising construction[00:05:00] How a friendship at Imperial College produced his first machine learning model[00:09:00] Where AI is genuinely working right now — and why there is no gold standard[00:17:00] The capability gap, and the risk of a two-tier industry[00:26:00] Susskind's question, the drill and the hole in the wall[00:28:00] Procurement, beauty parades, and buying car insurance before the internet[00:37:00] Why technology was never the bottleneck — culture was[00:41:00] Wrong decisions made early, then defended for a decade[00:45:00] Build your own AI board of advisors — the half-hour exercise[00:47:00] The RICS AI standard: literacy, governance, use, and bias[00:55:00] Closing questions: education, and ripping up the curriculum The Future We Build is a podcast exploring sustainability, innovation and systemic change in the built environment, hosted by Alex Edds. New episodes released weekly. Filmed at Mute showroom, Great Sutton Street, London. Produced by the team at Atalor FOLLOW THE SHOW 🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-future-we-build/id1877617346🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-future-we-build CONNECT WITH ALEX 🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexedds MORE ABOUT OUR GUEST James Garner, Senior Director and Global Head of AI and Data, Gleeds🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesgarner1976🌐 Gleeds: https://www.gleeds.com🌐 Project Flux: https://projectflux.ai

    The One With... the QS Who Went All In On AI

  3. 22 Jul

    The one with... the Housebuilder Seeking To Decarbonise 8500 Homes A Year

    Bellway builds around 8,500 homes a year — and a large share of its carbon footprint comes not from construction, but from the homes people live in after they buy them. Jamie Bursnell, Group Head of Technical and Innovation at Bellway Homes, has spent years working out how you actually decarbonise a new home at scale. His conclusions upend a few assumptions. The gas boiler won't be banned — the compliance tool will simply make it impossible to build with. And the hardest problem isn't technology, it's pricing: with electricity roughly three times the cost of gas, the greener home can cost more to run, and no politician wants to move that cost. In this episode:→ Why the end product, not the process, is where real estate must innovate→ How the Future Homes Standard ends the gas boiler without banning it→ The Energy House: testing a full home in a climate chamber→ What the heat pump research revealed: more is less→ Why electricity at 3x the price of gas is the real barrier→ How batteries and smart charging change the maths→ Embodied carbon, timber frame, and why bricklayers matter Timestamps:[00:01:00] Why house builders are the closest thing real estate has to a product[00:02:00] Bellway's scale, and its two drivers for innovation[00:03:00] The Future Homes Standard and the end of the gas boiler[00:11:00] Why not build somewhere to test and iterate the product[00:12:00] The Energy House opportunity — a home you can experiment on[00:16:00] The heat pump lesson: fewer pumps, simpler controls, more is less[00:21:00] Electricity at three times the cost of gas — the core problem[00:26:00] Smart charging, batteries and running cycles on free solar[00:34:00] Embodied carbon: 35 tonnes in a typical home, and timber frame[00:43:00] Why bricklayers didn't enjoy the low-carbon bricks[00:45:00] The magic-wand fix: invert the cost of gas and electricity The Future We Build is a podcast exploring sustainability, innovation and systemic change in the built environment, hosted by Alex Edds. New episodes weekly, filmed at Mute showroom, Great Sutton Street, London. 🔗 Show LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-future-we-build Connect with Alex✉️ alex@thefuturewebuildpodcast.com🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexedds

    The one with... the Housebuilder Seeking To Decarbonise 8500 Homes A Year

  4. 15 Jul

    The One With... The Investor Who Switched Sides To Run The Climate Standard For Real Estate

    CRREM tells real estate investors whether their assets are Paris-aligned or heading for stranding risk. Andrea Palmer is one year into the role as CRREM's first CEO — appointed after leading ESG integration for PGGM's global listed real estate portfolio, where she was pricing climate risk into valuations before most of the industry was paying attention. She previously worked at LaSalle Investment Management, GRESB, and Triodos. In this conversation she draws a hard line between two ways the industry uses CRREM — and argues that collapsing them is where the confusion starts. The first is transition risk assessment: understanding exposure, pricing it, and deciding whether to mitigate, accept, or get paid for it. The second is portfolio climate alignment — a different intent that can be achieved through capital reallocation without any CapEx. Andrea also addresses whether grid decarbonisation gives asset owners a free pass, reveals methodology assumptions being retired, and explains the deliberate strategy to embed CRREM into existing tech platforms rather than building a standalone tool. Key timestamps [00:00:00] Andrea's path from Chicago to Amsterdam via LaSalle and GRESB [00:06:00] How she approached CRREM — and what the first year has been like [00:13:00] The two buckets: transition risk assessment vs climate alignment [00:21:00] Grid decarbonisation assumptions baked into CRREM — policies not targets [00:25:00] Top-down pathways vs bottom-up asset reality — the pizza oven problem [00:36:00] Expanding to climate zone pathways for the US and Australia [00:39:30] Data centres: why they need an entirely new methodology [00:42:30] London Climate Week — Technical Council and the 0.8 version of CRREM's 2030 vision [00:48:00] Hong Kong — self-organised data sharing and the open contribution model [00:50:30] The one-to-many strategy and why Andrea doesn't want another login [00:54:30] Embodied carbon — relevant but not ready [00:57:00] Magic wand: data sharing across the board [01:00:00] Education at LP and banking level — the critical missing piece Organizations mentioned CRREM Foundation PGGM / PFZW LaSalle Investment Management GRESB Triodos Investment Management EPRA Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM) U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) APG Asset Management International Energy Agency (IEA) CBRE The Future We Build is a podcast exploring sustainability, innovation and systemic change in the built environment, hosted by Alex Edds. New episodes released weekly. Filmed at Obolife showroom, 8 Goswell Road, London - with thanks to Gary Helm Post production by Atalor Follow the show LinkedIn: The Future We Build Connect with Alex Connect on LinkedIn More about our guest Connect with Andrea Palmer on LinkedIn CRREM Foundation: https://crrem.org

    The One With... The Investor Who Switched Sides To Run The Climate Standard For Real Estate

  5. 8 Jul

    The One With... the World’s First Green Bond in Real Estate — Anna Denell, Vasakronan

    Anna Denell is the Chief Sustainability Officer at Vasakronan, a Swedish office real estate company managing 2.4 million square metres across Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Sweden’s other major cities. Owned by three state-controlled pension funds, Vasakronan has been embedding sustainability into its business model since 2008 — nearly two decades before it became a regulatory expectation for most European operators. What listeners come away with is a rare thing: a long-run case study where the financial and sustainability arguments genuinely converge, built on 15 years of integrated, audited reporting. Anna also lands a pointed critique of the EU’s CSRD rollback — arguing that one word change in the omnibus legislation has inadvertently exempted nearly the entire European real estate market from the reporting obligations that were beginning to drive real capital allocation change. [00:00:00]  Welcome from Milan: recording live at GBCI, what prompted Alex to seek out a Scandinavian voice[00:01:00]  The shift from strategy-setting to execution in real estate sustainability — and why the language is changing[00:03:00]  The 2008 origin story: a major Swedish real estate merger and sustainability as the cultural binder between two organisations[00:03:30]  Owner mandate: pension fund owners demanding returns without burden on environment or society[00:06:00]  Integrated non-financial reporting: 16 years of GRI reports, 10 years of audited accounts, CSRD-ready before it was required[00:07:00]  The 2008 energy target: 50% below industry average — achieved in eight years, then set again[00:08:00]  Scope 1 & 2 emissions down 90%: what drove it (reduction + renewable transition) and where they are now[00:08:00]  Embodied carbon: Vasakronan was calculating and reporting it ten years ago — “nobody at that time was talking about it”[00:10:00]  The financial proof: why reducing environmental impact and improving profitability are not in tension[00:10:00]  Energy included in rent: the Nordic landlord model, how costs and incentives are structured differently from the UK[00:12:00]  Why green buildings attract tenants, extend leases, and narrow yield spreads — the evidence base [00:12:30]  2013: Vasakronan issues the world’s first corporate green bond. Overnight: investor interest triples [00:14:00]  The magic wand: the EU’s CSRD omnibus mistake and why “and” vs “or” in the threshold criteria changes everything [00:16:00]  What debt investors actually want from sustainability data — and why building certification counts are the wrong answer Companies & organisations mentioned VasakronanAP GBCI (Global Building Certification Institute — event host, Milan) LEED (referenced in closing exchange re: certification vs impact data) CSRD — EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive GRI — Global Reporting Initiative (Vasakronan used for 16 years, audited for 10) EPBD — Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (provides national LCA definitions for embodied carbon) LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) — methodology used for embodied carbon calculation The Future We Build is a podcast exploring sustainability, innovation and systemic change in the built environment, hosted by Alex Edds. New episodes released weekly. Filmed on location at GBCI Circle, Milan. Follow the Show LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-future-we-build Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-future-we-build/id1877617346 Connect with AlexLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexedds More About Our GuestAnna Denell on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annadenell/ Vasakronan: https://vasakronan.se/en

    The One With... the World’s First Green Bond in Real Estate — Anna Denell, Vasakronan

  6. 1 Jul

    The One With... The Sustainability Valuer - There's No Such Thing As a Green Premium

    Sam Carson leads sustainability within CBRE’s Valuations practice — a role that sits entirely separate from the firm’s sustainability function, by design. After fifteen years in consultancy, Sam joined CBRE to solve the question the sector had been dancing around for years: what does sustainability actually do to value? It’s a question that turns out to be harder than it sounds, and far more consequential than most people appreciate. Key Timestamps [00:00:00] Sam’s background: 15 years in sustainability consultancy, and the “value problem” that nobody could answer — what does sustainability actually do to the numbers? [00:02:27] Why Sam’s role sits inside CBRE Valuations, not the sustainability function [00:04:52] The case for sustainability professionals embedding inside real estate business lines rather than sustainability teams [00:07:19] The coming market cycle: why the period of low transactions is the moment to stake your ground on what sustainability does next [00:09:33] What a valuer actually does — valuing cash flows assigned to buildings, not buildings themselves [00:11:59] Why sustainability improvements often don’t show up in valuations [00:14:26] “Prime is green”: why preserving the link between prime real estate and sustainability credentials is the market’s biggest achievement [00:16:39] The RICS ESG and Sustainability in Commercial Property Valuations — 4th Edition [00:19:04] The long tail problem: writing a standard that works for a chip shop in Aberdeen, not just institutional London [00:21:34] Why Sam loves EPCs: the only tool that shows you the full quality spectrum, and why they’re repricing the market in ways sustainability teams aren’t paying attention to [00:26:19] Sustainability’s communications failure: too focused on what isn’t working [00:28:42] Why sustainability professionals struggle to claim credit for systemic wins [00:31:08] The ULI PRESERVE tool: building a shared language for value and CapEx decisions [00:33:32] The brown discount thesis: why waiting to retrofit is a compounding cost [00:35:53] Place-based transformation: King’s Cross as the template, and why a version of it on the high street could become an institutional asset class [00:38:12] The brown-to-green investment opportunity: why 20–30% of buildings may be mispriced relative to their EPC performance [00:40:36] AI in real estate valuations: CBRE’s Ellis tool, automated valuation models, and why human judgment in valuations isn’t going anywhere soon [00:49:36] What AI is genuinely well-suited for in the built environment: physical climate risk data, building performance optimisation [00:52:01] Closing questions: If you had a magic wand... Organisations Mentioned CBRE RICS (Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors) IVS (International Valuation Standards) ULI (Urban Land Institute) JLL LaSalle Investment Management Octopus Energy Reports & Tools Mentioned RICS ESG and Sustainability in Commercial Property Valuations — 4th Edition (Professional Standard) RICS Valuation — Global Standards (Red Book) ULI PRESERVE Tool — Assessing Transition Risk in Valuations (C-Change) CRREM — Carbon Risk Real Estate Monitor (Risk Assessment Tool) UK Government — Non-Domestic MEES: EPC B Implementation Consultation The Future We Build is a podcast exploring sustainability, innovation and systemic change in the built environment, hosted by Alex Edds. New episodes released weekly. Filmed at Mute showroom, Great Sutton Street, London. Follow the Show LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-future-we-build Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-future-we-build/id1877617346 Connect with Alex LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexedds More About Our GuestSam Carson on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samcarson/ CBRE: https://www.cbre.com

    The One With... The Sustainability Valuer - There's No Such Thing As a Green Premium

  7. Season 2, Episode 1 Trailer

    Season 2 Trailer - The Future We Build

    The Future We Build is back! After a first season spent mapping the landscape — exploring where capital is flowing, how sustainability frameworks are being applied, and what it means to lead change from inside real estate — host Alex Edds returns with a sharper question for Season 2: what does it actually take to execute? Season one made one thing clear: the ambitions are there, the tools are increasingly available, but a stubborn gap remains between intention and delivery. Season 2 closes in on that gap. Alex speaks to the people working at the sharp end — measuring performance, valuing sustainability, assessing climate risk on the P&L, and navigating the friction that comes with trying to change a fragmented industry from within. The conversations span investors, developers, cost consultants, sustainability leaders, property managers, and innovators in construction and housebuilding. What makes the show worth your time is what it doesn't do. There are no polished conference presentations here. These are honest conversations — about what is working, what isn't, and why the distance between strategy and execution is still the defining challenge facing sustainability in the built environment. [00:00:00] Alex welcomes listeners back and reflects on what the response to Season 1 revealed about appetite for honest conversations in real estate and sustainability[00:01:00] A recap of Season 1's arc: from capital flows and sustainability frameworks to the leaders navigating them — and the innovators and VCs trying to bring new solutions to market[00:02:00] The insight that shaped Season 2: ambitions and tools exist, but the gap between strategy and execution remains the central problem — so this season speaks to the people whose job it is to close it[00:03:00] Why Season 2 deliberately assembles a wide range of seats at the table — investors, developers, cost consultants, sustainability leaders, property managers — because this is a systems problem that no single perspective can solve[00:04:00] A call to action: subscribe, rate, review, sign up to the newsletter — and an invitation to connect on LinkedIn and shape future episodesWhat you'll learn Why the gap between sustainability strategy and on-the-ground execution is still the defining challenge in real estateHow investors, developers, consultants and property managers are approaching the shift from ambition to actionWhat it takes to measure sustainability performance in a way that actually demonstrates progressHow organisations are starting to put a financial figure on climate risk — and where it shows up on the P&LWhy innovation is so difficult in a fragmented industry with competing stakeholders and misaligned incentivesHow housebuilding and construction are grappling with technology, efficiency and the constraints of volume productionWhere artificial intelligence could have the most material impact across the built environmentWhy honest conversations about what isn't working are often more valuable than polished success storiesHow collaboration across different parts of the industry is essential to solving complex sustainability challengesWhat the people delivering change every day believe will shape the future of real estate and sustainabilityThe Future We Build is a podcast exploring sustainability, innovation and systemic change in the built environment, hosted by Alex Edds. New episodes released weekly. This show is edited by the wonderful team at Atalor. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-future-we-buildApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-future-we-build/id1877617346Email: alex@thefuturewebuildpodcast.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexedds

    Season 2 Trailer - The Future We Build

  8. 22 Apr

    The one with.. The AI provocateur. Part 2. Agency and the Architecture of Change - with Antony Slumbers

    Antony Slumbers is one of the most consistently provocative thinkers at the intersection of AI and real estate. In this second of a two-part conversation — recorded before the recent stock market turbulence that he references mid-episode — Alex and Antony pick up where they left off and go further: into the future of AI hardware, the geopolitics of energy, the sustainability implications of large language models, and what it will actually take for real estate businesses to transform rather than just tinker. Key Timestamps •      [00:41:00] The exponential efficiency curve —why the cost of a given level of AI intelligence has fallen 10x per year for the last three to four years •      [00:42:00] Right-sizing AI models — why state-of-the-art frontier models are already overkill for most real estate tasks, and what that means for cost •      [00:43:00] The Apple business model for AI — how open source models will converge with on-device computing to shift processing away from data centres •      [00:45:00] Data centre energy and the 3% myth —why the macro figure is less alarming than the localised grid constraints in Virginia and across the US •      [00:47:00] AI optimisation of the built environment — why DeepMind cut Google's data centre energy use by 40%, and why most buildings leave 10–20% on the table •      [00:51:00] Materials science as the next frontier — DeepMind's investment in low-cost sustainable materials and the question of when solar glazing becomes viable at scale •      [00:54:00] Europe's innovation deficit — why high energy prices create demand but regulatory instinct stifles supply, and the poor storytelling around net zero •      [00:58:00] Sustainability as a byproduct of technical buildings — Antony's argument that a fully sensored, efficientbuilding is already most of the way to sustainable •      [00:59:00] Institutional mandates haven't changed — European investors still require sustainable assets, they juststopped saying ESG out loud •      [01:01:00] The hospitality niche — real estate assets designed for digital detox, 'human as the new luxury', and the demand side that might pull sustainable development forward •      [01:04:00] How to eat the sustainability elephant — Antony's argument for ignoring what you can't move and doing what you can within your own patch •      [01:07:00] The competitive threat to incumbents — how well-funded spinouts with domain expertise and AI-first architecture could undercut established firms on margin •      [01:09:00] Alex on building a sustainability duediligence tool in three evenings using Claude Code — and the question of what actually creates defensible value •      [01:11:00] The three components of real AI value — data access, orchestration across systems, and trust; why software is the easiest part •      [01:15:00] Hallucination and the trust problem — why even cited, credible-looking sources can be entirely fabricated, and why domain knowledge is the verification layer •      [01:16:00] The CRE Automation Matrix — Antony'sfour-quadrant framework for deciding which real estate tasks to automate: plumbing vs cognition, easy vs hard to verify •      [01:19:00] Making sustainability economically viable for the whole market — how AI could bring the cost of high-quality analysis down from Blackstone-level to mid-market •      [01:20:00] Closing question: What one thing would Antony want changed? The Future We Build is a podcast exploring sustainability, innovation and systemic change in the built environment, hosted by Alex Edds. New episodes released weekly.Filmed at Mute showroom, Great Sutton Street, London. •      LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-future-we-build •      LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexedds Antony Slumbers •      LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antonyslumbers •      Website: https://www.antonyslumbers.com

    The one with.. The AI provocateur. Part 2. Agency and the Architecture of Change - with Antony Slumbers
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About

The Future We Build is a podcast about sustainability in real estate when it is shaped by innovation, investment, and real commercial decision making. Hosted by Alex Edds, a corporate sustainability innovator with over 20 years inside the industry, this podcast looks at sustainability through the lens of value creation, resilience, and human outcomes, not just carbon metrics. This is a show for people building, backing, and buying the next generation of solutions for the built environment, offering rare insight into how sustainability, innovation, and capital intersect in practice.

Information

  • Creator
    Alex Edds
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    18
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Alex Edds
  • Show Website
    The Future We Build

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