Decarbonizing Real Estate: Insights from Sustainable Investing Leader Wincel Kaufmann
Real estate is responsible for nearly 40% of global carbon emissions, yet efforts to decarbonize the built environment remain slow. But the problem isn’t a lack of solutions, it’s the difficulty of aligning financial priorities and operational decisions across an industry built for stability, not change.
Wincel Kaufmann has spent her career working to close that gap. With a background in real estate analysis and ESG investing at BlackRock, she brings both financial expertise and a practical understanding of how institutions work and why progress often stalls. Her international experience adds another layer of perspective, shaped by different regulatory environments, investment approaches, and market realities.
In this conversation with Perl Street, Kaufmann shares her perspective on the energy transition, the structural and financial barriers to decarbonizing real estate, and the communication gaps that continue to slow progress. Her insights reflect the kind of clarity and coordination required to drive meaningful progress in one of the world’s most emissions-intensive sectors.
A Career Rooted in Change and Purpose
Wincel Kaufmann’s path into sustainable investing wasn’t linear, but evolved in response to changes she saw unfolding within the investment industry. She began her career in real estate analysis, then transitioned into ESG-focused roles at BlackRock, where she helped global clients assess risk and performance across commercial real estate portfolios. Around 2019, she noticed investor attitudes toward sustainability were shifting. What had once been considered a niche concern was starting to reshape investment priorities at the institutional level.
“A lot of our clients were asking how they could allocate capital into sustainable investing and become more responsible investors,” she said. “My career really evolved through that transition.”
What guided her through that evolution was a deep comfort with change itself. Kaufmann grew up in the Philippines and went on to live and work in London, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Switzerland. That international exposure helped her develop a flexible, systems-oriented view of business and policy. “As soon as you move to another country, it gives you another perspective,” she said. “Being exposed to different countries and businesses helps you become adaptable to many circumstances. It also teaches you how to navigate uncertainty in complex situations where you’re dealing with a lot of stakeholders.”
That adaptability has defined Kaufmann’s approach to sustainable investing. Her work is grounded in a belief that purpose and performance are not at odds, and that long-term value comes from being willing to lead through change.
Real Estate’s Role in Decarbonization
For Kaufmann, tackling climate change through real estate starts with one of the sector’s biggest operating costs: energy. “Looking at real estate, it's really looking at your energy consumption,” she explained. “That’s the biggest cost and the biggest part of your greenhouse gas emissions.” Addressing that footprint requires asking the right questions: Where is the energy coming from? What mix of sources is your provider using? Can you install solar? And is there financing available to make it viable?
These aren’t theoretical questions. Kaufmann has worked with clients to assess these decisions at scale, across residential and commercial portfolios. The opportunity lies not just in a single building retrofit but in applying the same model repeatedly across entire asset classes. “Think about the savings in one house—then imagine doing that for thousands of homes, offices, logistics parks.”
Decarbonization also extends beyond operations to the materials used in construction. Steel and cement—essential to nearly every building—carry a significant amount of embodied carbon due to the high heat and energy required in their manufacture. “It’s very difficult to bring down emissions from that perspective,” she noted. “But that piece is evolving.” Lower-carbon alternatives are still expensive, but as adoption increases, the cost will come down. “Once you scale things, you’ll have economies of scale. Things start to become cheaper… it becomes more affordable to use low-carbon materials.”
Kaufmann sees decarbonization as a series of tangible choices: where energy comes from, how it’s financed, and which materials are used to build. When those decisions are repeated across hundreds of assets, the impact becomes real, both environmentally and financially.
The Biggest Investment Opportunity of Our Time
Decarbonizing real estate goes beyond retrofitting individual assets. It requires acknowledging how deeply the built environment is tied to carbon-intensive infrastructure, and what it will take to change that. “The biggest opportunity for both business and investment is this energy transition,” Kaufmann explained. “We’re moving away from traditional fossil fuels into more renewable and cleaner sources of energy.”
That shift touches every part of the real estate environment, from heating and cooling systems to how materials are produced and transported. But the economics remain difficult. “This traditional form of energy—we’ve been using it for at least 100 years. Our whole economy is built around it,” she said. “To transition away is very difficult. It’s very expensive. And it’s the cause of a lot of social issues and political tensions, because people’s lives depend on it.”
Still, the opportunity is enormous. “It requires a lot of capital, but there’s an opportunity for both public money and private capital to finance this, so that they can do something good, and also get the returns that they need.”
She points to mindset as one of the biggest barriers. “Any type of change is difficult. We, as human beings, tend to resist change because it creates uncertainty and instability,” she said. “But if it’s going to make something better—why not?”
That mindset shift isn’t just about accepting change, it’s about changing how value is measured. “We ask companies to invest for the long-term, but judge them on quarterly performance,” she said. “That’s a fundamental conflict.” If the energy transition is going to accelerate, investors and institutions will need to align their expectations with the scale and timing of the outcomes they claim to support.
Making Sustainability Investable at Every Level
Owners and operators often approach sustainability from different angles. Owners tend to focus on long-term asset value. They want buildings that hold value over time, perform reliably, and can meet evolving ESG expectations. Operators, by contrast, are often evaluated on short-term performance—things like energy costs, maintenance, and operating budgets. These aren’t opposing views, but they reflect different time horizons and priorities. “We need to communicate how sustainability can increase the value of a property,” Kaufmann said. “From an operating perspective, it’s usually framed as saving money. But these two things should be working together.”
Bridging those priorities requires more than aligning incentives on paper. It depends on how decisions are made, and that starts with data. “Real estate has a lot of data already,” she said. “They’ve been collecting information on energy, water, and building systems for decades.” The difference now is the availability of tools like AI to interpret that data and make it useful. But the technology is only part of the solution. “You need a system that makes the data readable, actionable, and tied to decision-making. And someone has to own it—someone who moves the insights forward and builds it back into strategy and budgeting.”
That kind of data-driven decision-making also creates clearer pathways for financing. As energy performance becomes easier to measure and track, it’s becoming more feasible for lenders to tie financing terms to sustainability outcomes. “We’ve seen a lot of banks and private financing targeting sustainability outcomes,” Kaufmann said. “For smaller developers looking to invest in their properties to improve energy efficiency, these types of loans are starting to become more available and more attractive.”
The potential is real: better rates and growing access to capital for projects that deliver environmental benefits. But progress has been uneven. “We need that to become more mainstream,” she said. The long-term vision is a market where green financing is no longer a specialized product. “In the future, you shouldn’t need to apply for a sustainability or green loan. It should just be a loan.”
Breaking Down the Sustainability Language Barrier
Even when sustainability and finance teams are working toward the same goals, the disconnect in how they communicate can stall progress. Kaufmann has seen this play out often in real estate and investment settings, where technical ESG frameworks clash with valuation and risk models. “Sometimes these two worlds aim to do the same thing, but there’s a lot of miscommunication because they’re speaking different languages,” she said. “It sounds very simple, but in reality, it creates a lot of tension.”
Early in her career, she learned this firsthand. “I used to tell fund managers why doing good was the right thing to do,” she said. “But they already know that. What they need is a business case. I had to learn how to translate the value of sustainability in terms of increasing the valuation of their investments.”
That realization led to the creation of blueColab, a platform focused on helping professionals integrate sustainability into financial and operational decisions. The initiative brings together people from both sides—ESG specialists, fund managers, and asset owners—and helps them translate regulatory expectations and climate goals into practical strategies. It’s also designed to build communication skills across teams, giving sustainability professionals the tools to engage more effectively with decision-makers who are focused on returns, not rhetoric.
“We haven’t yet made it simple enough for the ordinary person to understand where their money is going,” she said. “Eventually, that’s the goal—to make sustainability understandable and actionable for everyone.”
From Boardroom to Individual Action
While decarbonization is often discussed at the institutional level, Kaufmann believes individuals play a critical role in accelerating change, particularly as investors, clients, and tenants. “Whether you have a lot of money or you’re employed or self-employed, you have to think of yourself as an investor, because all money is flowing through you,” she said. From savings accounts to insurance policies and retirement funds, capital is being allocated on behalf of individuals, whether they realize it or not. “You need to go to these institutions and say, ‘These are my sustainability values. I don’t want exposure to fossil fuels, and I expect my returns to be aligned with the market.’”
She’s already seen it happen. “In Switzerland, if you go to a bank, they’ll ask if you have any sustainability criteria for your investments. Some people say yes, and they go into detail. Some people don’t, they just want the returns. Either way, that's fine—but we need more financial institutions to do this for their clients, and more customers to actively participate.”
In real estate, that influence extends to residents and employees. “We need to use our voice in terms of what we want to see and what we want to happen,” Kaufmann said. “Because, believe it or not, real estate companies will move. They want to meet their customers' expectations.”
She sees a similar opportunity in her work with the Solar Impulse Foundation, where she serves in an advisory role. The organization curates a catalog of clean technologies that are effective and commercially viable—solutions that can be deployed today, not years from now. “These are startups in development, looking for investors and clients,” she said. “And this is what we need: solutions that work and can scale.”
In her view, this is where meaningful progress happens. Not just in government commitments or corporate roadmaps, but in the thousands of smaller decisions made by individuals, property managers, and early-stage innovators. Each action signals demand, and together they shape the direction of capital, policy, and innovation.
Unlocking Real Returns in Real Estate Decarbonization
Decarbonizing real estate isn’t about invention, it’s about execution. The strategies exist. The capital exists. So does the demand. What’s missing is coordination across the value chain. Owners, operators, investors, and regulators all have a role to play—but someone has to move first.
Kaufmann’s upcoming book, Real Returns, builds on that idea. It’s about making sustainable investing more accessible and translating climate goals into financial terms that drive decisions and unlock capital. That clarity is especially urgent in real estate, where slow cycles and siloed incentives often delay progress.
This is exactly where Wincel is helping Perl Street shape and design the technology that transforms real estate decarbonization from a reporting exercise into a financial investment strategy. By solving the core problem — fragmented data, slow analysis, and lack of financial clarity — the partnership is enabling real estate managers and investors to move faster from sustainability targets to investment decisions. Together, we are creating a platform that connects energy asset performance directly to financial outcomes, accelerating decarbonization while unlocking new value across property portfolios.
Because in the end, progress won’t come from theory. It will come from the people willing to act on what we already know works.