At IMT, we believe that buildings hold the key to achieving necessary, aggressive climate goals—as well as to creating robust local economies and jobs, saving significant sums of money, and improving the quality of life for people across the U.S.
To fully unlock this potential requires a significant increase in market demand for high-performance buildings, alongside widespread changes in day-to-day business practices to better incorporate efficiency in real estate. To accomplish this type of significant market transformation, IMT believes in the power of partnerships. So, I am excited about the announcement of a new partnership between IMT and Sparkfund, a financial technology company that is providing a new way for organizations to access energy systems via subscription to advanced energy technology.
One element that has long been at the center of IMT’s efforts to meet and bolster demand for better building performance is examining, improving, and expanding the way organizations procure energy technology. Whether improving existing models or exploring new models coming to market, our goal is to make it easier to improve building performance. We see this shared goal in Sparkfund. IMT is honored to be selected by Sparkfund as the sole recipient of its pledge to donate a portion of the revenue from its new technology subscriptions. This partnership brings together a company and a nonprofit organization whose work closely align with our shared goal of increasing market market demand for high-performance buildings.
Despite the enormous, time-sensitive challenges ahead, I and the IMT team are encouraged by the determination and leadership of U.S. cities, businesses, and citizens to secure a more resilient, sustainable, and prosperous future. As I said last year, in supporting city and business leaders as they explore a diversity of innovation, capture best practices, and collaborate to create permanent market change, we know firsthand that the results can be enormous.
How huge? For example, we estimate that by 2030 the combined action of the 20 cities participating in the City Energy Project, a joint initiative of IMT and the Natural Resources Defense Council, could reduce energy bills by over $1.5 billion annually and reduce carbon pollution equivalent to taking 2 million passenger vehicles off the road each year. Engaging the real estate community, our Landlord-Tenant Energy Partnership aims to reduce energy use in leased U.S. space by 20 percent, saving billions of dollars and millions of tons of greenhouse gas emissions.
For more than 20 years, IMT has been devoted to driving energy efficiency into standard business practice. We remain grateful to our many partners, as well as all the future partners to come, for working alongside us toward these ambitious—and achievable—targets.
