Decarbonizing 70% of Buildings: AI, Energy Storage, & the Future of Sustainable Design with Efrie Escott
The Green Building Matters Podcast with Charlie Cichetti
Release Date: 05/13/2026
Building Communities That Last: Human Flourishing, Waste Audits, & the Future of Sustainability with Brian Bollinger
The Green Building Matters Podcast with Charlie Cichetti
🎯 The Green Impact Report Quick take: Sustainability isn't just about reducing carbon or earning certifications — it's about creating places where people can thrive. In this episode, Brian Bollinger shares how green building, technology, AI, waste reduction, and thoughtful community design all work together to create healthier buildings, stronger businesses, and more resilient communities. 🎓 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion Brian Bollinger is a sustainability strategist, entrepreneur, and connector passionate about helping organizations build healthier, more efficient, and more...
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Carbon Neutral Concrete Starts with Collaboration: Education, Innovation & Building a More Resilient Future with Kerry Sutton
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✅ The Green Impact Report Quick Take: Concrete is responsible for building nearly every community on earth—and it's also one of the biggest opportunities to reduce embodied carbon. In this episode, Kerry Sutton explains why the future isn't about finding one miracle material. It's about educating the entire industry, embracing innovation responsibly, and collaborating across every stakeholder to create resilient, lower-carbon infrastructure that lasts for generations. 🎓 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion Kerry Sutton, PE, LEED AP is the Executive Director of NEU: An ACI...
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Beyond Buildings: Scaling Climate Action Across the Built Environment with Vincent Martinez
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💚 The Green Impact Report Quick take: The next chapter of sustainability isn't about making individual buildings slightly better — it's about redesigning entire communities. Vincent Martinez explains why the future of decarbonization depends on collaboration, adaptive reuse, electrification, and thinking beyond the building itself. 🫶 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion Vincent Martinez is the President & CEO of Architecture 2030, where he has spent nearly two decades helping shape the global movement toward a carbon-neutral built environment. From launching...
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Sustainability Is Woven In, Not Handed Out: Making Green Building the Default with Dave Hubka
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✅ The Green Impact Report Quick take: Dave Hubka has spent 20+ years turning "up to code" into "why would we settle for that?" — and his approach of building sustainability directly into the spec (instead of waiting for a client to ask) is a playbook every green building professional can steal. 🤝 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion Dave Hubka is the Sustainability Practice Leader at EUA, where he lights the way for the firm's team to create healthier buildings for clients and the environment. His work starts with listening — collaborating closely with clients to uncover...
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Ken Rhee on Turning BIM Data Into a Living, Breathing Digital Twin
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🎯 The Green Impact Report Quick take: Only 3% of people on a building project can actually open a BIM file — Ken Rhee is fixing that, and using AI and sensors to turn "as-built" data into real-time building intelligence that pays off in energy, insurance, and asset value. 🤩 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion Ken Rhee Joined VIM Build in Atlanta, GA as President at the beginning of January, 2026. Co-founded Integral VIM, a BIM consulting company based in Shanghai in 2021, together with Arol Wolford ; currently developing VXBOS, a VIM-based 3D building operating software....
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Leading with Influence: FAIA, LEED Fellow Kirk Teske on Sustainability, Design Leadership, and Protecting What Matters
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🎯 The Green Impact Report Quick take: After 42 years at HKS, Kirk Teske reflects on a career that helped shape sustainable design at scale. From leading one of the earliest LEED pilot projects to influencing generations of architects, Kirk shares why responsible design, stakeholder engagement, and courageous leadership remain the foundation of a better built environment. 🎓 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion Kirk Teske is a retired architect, LEED Fellow, and former Global Director at HKS, where he spent more than four decades helping transform one of the world's leading design...
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Special Episode: Building Skema.ai - Why AI-Native Building Design Is About to Change Everything with Charlie Cichetti, Robin Bienfait & Jim Grady
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🎯 The Green Impact Report Quick Take: What happens when a LEED Fellow entrepreneur, a Fortune 500 technology executive (turn investor), and a startup growth strategist sit down to discuss the future of building design? You get an inside look at how AI is reshaping architecture, construction, ownership, and the economics of the built environment. In this special episode, Charlie Cichetti, Robin Bienfait, and Jim Grady explore why the next generation of buildings won't be designed from scratch — they'll be built from intelligence. 🎓 Meet the Innovators Charlie Cichetti Co-Founder &...
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AI, Digital Infrastructure, & the Future of Decarbonization: Anya Eydman on Building Trust in the Energy Transition
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🎯 The Green Impact Report Quick take: AI, data centers, and digital infrastructure are transforming the built environment faster than most of us realize. In this episode, Anya Eydman explains why the future of decarbonization isn't just about technology—it's about trust, education, community engagement, and helping buildings become active participants in a cleaner, more resilient energy ecosystem. 🎓 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion **Anya Eydman is a strategic advisor and community advocate working at the intersection of energy infrastructure, grid assets, and...
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Designing Schools That Heal, Inspire, and Perform Better: Human-Centered Sustainable Design with Bob Morris
The Green Building Matters Podcast with Charlie Cichetti
🎯 The Green Impact Report Quick take: What happens when sustainability stops being about buzzwords — and starts being about healthier kids, stronger schools, and lower operational costs? Architect Bob Morris breaks down how net-zero schools, biophilic design, and human-centered architecture are reshaping the future of education. 🙋 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion **Bob is an architect who specializes in the planning and design of K12 schools for EUA, a multi-disciplinary design firm with five office locations in Wisconsin, Colorado, and Georgia. Architecture,...
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From LEED to Decarbonization: Tanya Eagle's Blueprint for the Future of Sustainable Buildings
The Green Building Matters Podcast with Charlie Cichetti
♻️ The Green Impact Report Quick take: Tanya Eagle has spent her career proving that sustainability isn’t a “nice to have” — it’s a smarter way to design, operate, and future-proof buildings. In this episode, the LEED Fellow and JLL sustainability leader shares why the future of green building is bigger than certifications and how decarbonization, wellness, resilience, and material health are converging into one holistic strategy. 🙋 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion With over sixteen years of experience leading sustainable design programs, Tanya is dedicated...
info_outline📕 The Green Impact Report
Quick take: If you care about scaling sustainability beyond one building at a time, this episode is a Masterclass. Efrie Escott shows how decarbonization, AI, and systems thinking are reshaping the entire built environment — fast.
🤗 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion
Efrie Escott is the Decarbonization Technical Program Leader at Schneider Electric, promoting strategies to accelerate the transition to a regenerative built environment. As an architect and LCA practitioner, Efrie previously led sustainability efforts as a Principal of Environmental Research within the Kieran Timberlake Research Group, where she was a core member of the development team for Tally, an award-winning BIM-integrated life cycle assessment tool.
She was a member of the USGBC Materials + Resources and the ILFI Energy + Carbon Technical Advisory Groups, AIA Committee on Climate Action and Design Excellence, founder of Philadelphia’s Dynamo User Group, and Co-Chair for AIA Philadelphia Women in Architecture.
She currently chairs the Embodied Carbon chapter for ASHRAE/ICC Standard 240p and serves on the ILFI’s Board of Directors. Efrie's research has been published in several peer-reviewed, internationally-recognized journals. She lectures internationally and teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.
🌱 Breaking Ground on Better Building
In this episode, Efrie Escott challenges the status quo of green building by zooming out — from individual projects to entire systems:
⭐️ Key Insight #1: Decarbonization isn’t a buzzword — it’s a systems-level mandate.
- The Challenge: Buildings are optimized individually, ignoring grid instability, climate risk, and community impact.
- The Solution: Shift from single-building thinking to interconnected systems — where buildings, grids, and communities work together.
- ROI: Lower operating costs, improved resilience, and scalable carbon reduction across portfolios — not just projects.
⭐️ Key Insight #2: The future isn’t new tech — it’s better-connected tech.
- The Challenge: Most buildings already have powerful systems — but they operate in silos.
- The Solution: Integrate existing technologies using data, AI, and smart controls to unlock compounding performance gains.
- ROI: “1 + 1 = 2.5” — increased efficiency without massive capital spend, faster ROI through optimization over replacement.
⭐️ Key Insight #3: Energy storage is essential — but today’s solutions come with trade-offs.
- The Challenge: Renewable energy is intermittent, and lithium-ion batteries carry heavy lifecycle impacts and regulatory hurdles.
- The Solution: Use a mix of strategies — load shifting, smarter controls, and emerging storage tech (beyond lithium-ion).
- ROI: Greater grid resilience, reduced peak demand costs, and a pathway to cleaner energy — without over-reliance on imperfect tech.
🎧 Sustainable Soundbite
“Better buildings aren’t just about efficiency—they’re about protecting both people and the planet.”
— Efrie Escott
🏋️♂️ Your Green Building Action Plan
Transform your next project with these steps:
- This Week: Identify one building system (HVAC, lighting, controls) that isn’t integrated — and explore how to connect it.
- This Quarter: Pilot energy optimization strategies like load shifting or AI-driven analytics before investing in new hardware.
- This Year: Expand your scope — plan projects at the portfolio or community level, not just individual buildings.
🔗 Connect & Learn More
🌿 Access full episode resources: https://gbes.com/podcast/
📄 Read the transcript: HERE
🔗 Connect with Efrie Escott:
💚 Join the Green Building Movement: https://www.gbes.com
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