This October, Building Energy Exchange (BE-Ex) is bringing Strategic Decarbonization Planning (SDP) to Greenbuild 2026 through two interactive sessions designed to help building professionals tackle complex retrofit projects.
Taking place October 20-23 at the Javits Center in New York City, Greenbuild International Conference and Expo is the world’s largest annual event for green building professionals. Attendees will learn and source solutions to improve resilience, sustainability, and quality of life in our buildings, cities, and communities.
At this year’s Greenbuild, the BE-Ex team will host two sessions about SDP, which is an innovative approach to long-term carbon reduction planning that enables building owners to plan upgrades strategically and align investments with both asset lifecycles and sustainability goals.
The SDP framework, emerging through lessons learned from NYSERDA’s $50 million Empire Building Challenge low-carbon retrofit demonstration program, focuses on implementing actionable steps while retaining flexibility as technology and policy evolves. This allows a building owner or manager to take action now, instead of waiting for better technology and potentially renewing a fossil-fueled powered energy system for another life cycle.
BE-Ex in collaboration with NYSERDA, RMI, and the Urban Land Institute created the Retrofit Playbook for Large Buildings, a knowledge-sharing platform dedicated to supporting building owners, operators, and their design and engineering teams in creating cost-effective, long-term decarbonization strategies for large buildings. The Playbook details the SDP framework and showcases key findings and case studies from the 27 commercial and multifamily real estate owners who have committed to eliminate carbon emissions from some of New York State’s tallest and most iconic buildings..
Out of the Playbook, BE-Ex, NYSERDA, RMI, University of Cincinnati, and Ember Strategies, have developed a three-part training series to equip industry professionals with the core tools and components of the SDP framework to drive practical, cost-effective, low-carbon retrofits in large buildings.
Session 1: Decarbonize by Design: The Transformative Impact of Charrettes
October 20, 10-11am, Javits Center
How can project teams transform their thinking about building decarbonization and generate cogent plans that incorporate long-term flexibility to future-proof their assets? With presentations by the Retrofit Playbook for Large Buildings team and members of the Whitney Young Manor building project, attendees will learn about how leading multifamily real estate participants in NYSERDA’s Empire Building Challenge (EBC) are utilizing design charrettes and SDP to challenge assumptions and transform business-as-usually thinking, to produce viable and replicable retrofit projects.
Session 2: Let’s Decarbonize! A Hands-On Building Decarbonization Workshop
October 21, 10:30-11:30am, Javits Center
Are you excited about decarbonization? Do you love to play board games? If so, this session is for you! Participants will work in teams to create mock decarbonization plans for real-world building scenarios. Teams will evaluate strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while weighing factors such as costs, trigger events, and other site- specific considerations. Come prepared to collaborate, apply your skills, and dive into the decision-making process behind effective building decarbonization!
This material was developed at the University of Cincinnati by Amanda Webb, Barry Abramson, Katherine Castiello Jones, and Heather Cheng. It is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Award No. 2339386.
Join us at Greenbuild 2026 and discover how Strategic Decarbonization Planning can help turn ambitious decarbonization goals into practical, achievable action.
Register today and secure your tickets for Greenbuild here!
Written by Thalia Witkovsky, Intern, Educational Resources
