MyGlobalHome says that it is possible to make the 21st-century home net-zero.

What do we think of when we imagine the ultimate 21st-century home? Does it look space age, like something off The Jetsons? Is it vast? Modest? Minimalist? Expensive? Packed with confusing high-tech features? Or could it look like your home?

Not possible?

Actually, it is. An innovative company, MyGlobalHome says it is developing a platform that can transform any building, radically broadening the scope of ‘the smart home’ to become entirely self-sufficient – and the best thing, it’s a technology that can be universally accessible to all.

MyGlobalHome is pioneering the world’s first AI-powered Green Buildings that work to constantly improve their efficiency and utility. Never has there been a more pressing time for such software. In the face of soaring energy costs, economic uncertainty and the felt effects of climate change, a platform that enables our homes – or any building – to reduce our energy consumption and live in a healthy, comfortable, and secure environment is essential.

Such is the scope of this technology that MyGlobalHome believes the insights derived from this network of Intelligent Buildings could help to make net-zero in the built environment a realistic possibility. Their platform currently being piloted around the UK uses AI to identify optimum building performance metrics from a network of intelligent buildings. It has the reach to join key industry stakeholders; investors, developers, suppliers and service providers to design, construct and maintain the most sustainable and self-sufficient property for any given location.

We’ve witnessed in other industries, how user experience data has driven new technologies and ways of living transformational to society, the smartphone the most famous example. But this transformation has yet to encompass the construction industry as a whole. And if we think about the effect that real-world insights from Intelligent Buildings might have on our relationships with the built environment, we’re not just talking about transforming our own lives, but that of the communities we live in, the businesses we work for and the earth we inhabit.

At this very moment, in the automotive industry, Elon Musk’s Tesla company is developing its own supercomputer, Dojo, designed specifically to deliver a global network of self-sufficient and autonomous cars. Cars that will be able to navigate their way through ever-changing urban infrastructure. Not only do these vehicles hold the potential to make roads safer by reducing the scope for human error, but through their desirability as a consumer product they will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by accelerating the transition to electric and hybrid vehicles.

So too can it be for the built environment; homes that help us to live well and live better. A network of data coming from buildings across different regions that reports on climate, material types and ways of living that will help to determine the optimum designs and technologies for any location to make them the most efficient and healthful homes within that region.

Imagine you’re cycling home after a day’s work. It’s drizzling outside, the kind of deceptively light rain that coats everything and leaves you soaked in minutes. You sigh. It always seems to be raining at the moment. You think of the elderly woman across the street who is worried about the rising damp in her kitchen, the leaks in her roof tiles, her rotting windows… Luckily you don’t have any of these problems. Your home has been built with materials that take into account the dewpoint and humidity of the town you live in, which in turn optimises how your home heats and cools itself. The window shading automatically tracks the movement of the sun around your property, taking advantage of the sun’s heat, and providing the necessary shade to maintain the optimum temperature you’ve set, not to mention syncing with the lighting controls. And although you hate the rain, you know that as you cycle home, it is doing everything it can to capture all of it which it will then use in watering your plants or for washing – for nothing is wasted.

This wasn’t something you did yourself. Incredibly, your home came like this from the developer you bought it off, designed, built and now self-sufficient, learning from what’s already in use from the insights gained from the whole building network on the MyGlobalHome platform. It’s the post occupancy evaluation that’s currently missing in construction – presently a huge black hole. But back to that bike ride­–

Your trouser legs are filthy by the time you get home, the detritus of the road splashed up the back of your cycle jacket. But it’s ok because your home is looking after you. You have a new washer-drier, one that is four times as energy efficient - and won’t burn your house down because your home can detect fault anomalies in the energy signature from your appliances.

In fact, you know exactly how much energy each appliance uses; how it changes from month-to-month, season to season. You’re aware of the rooms which are the most energy efficient, the chores you do that are the least energy efficient. It helps you maintain a healthy environment for your family by monitoring the air quality and humidity inside and out. All this knowledge is displayed at a touch, via an app, in glorious at-a-glance technicolour. You know how much heat your house leeches (close to zero, thanks to the regionally specific insulation that was chosen by the developer using the platform), how much water it consumes and how to prevent unnecessary expenditure on energy bills, thanks to the ‘optimise’ setting which eliminates energy usage on sockets and in rooms where and when it’s not needed, reducing usage by an incredible thirty percent.

This is what a 21st-century home should be – and it’s not a dream; the intelligence is there to achieve it. A home that thinks for itself and continually learns over time, making marginal gains to improve its lived-in experience and performance whilst reducing risks from fire, pollution and climate. A home that exceeds the increasing environmental regulations on the construction industry. A home that enables investors to decarbonise their existing property portfolios and immediately quantify their investments and thus, reduce their exposure and risk. A home that is making the idea of net-zero in the built environment a reality. A home that is powered by the world’s first AI powered Green Building Investment & Intelligence Platform, designed by MyGlobalHome in collaboration with key industry stakeholders.

It’s not even a question of who benefits, more who doesn’t benefit? For institutional investors beset by concerns of corporate greenwashing, MyGlobalHome’s Green Building Intelligence Network is an investment that can immediately quantify its ESG impact as well as demonstrate its long-term revenue. For those investors exposed to stranded asset risks such as buildings with low energy ratings, now finding themselves at increased regulatory risk for the penalties that accompany this, it is yet another reason to act.

For developers, particularly, small to medium developers struggling to grapple with new directives from the UKGBC (World Building Council), Environmental Audit Committee and legislation like the Future Homes Standards 2025 its revolutionary. They can understand which are the optimum build materials for any given environment prior to commissioning and track the performance of previous housing stock. MyGlobalHome’s data insights can help key stakeholders streamline building design, specification – avoiding the common problem of over-specifying on properties that embeds energy inefficiency from the off – delivery, documentation and building handover can all be executed via the platform.

MyGlobalHome’s platform enables the industry’s present disparate parts to engage and unite around a certified ecosystem. With data at its core the platform allows for developers, investors, and suppliers to have full visibility – and the equal incentivisation to be part of a building intelligence network that’s main goal is the engineering of net-zero into the built environment. In essence, to have the same impact upon the development and construction industry that the streaming platforms did for the entertainment industry.

And because it is based on a Web 3.0 system, data can finally be owned by the consumer. No more Google Home snooping and selling your data. Homeowners and occupiers own their data, cutting out the middlemen of the internet, the likes of Google, Apple, Meta who have monopolised and monetized our data. Instead, the Green Building Intelligence Network stores and encrypts data at the source and records it onto the blockchain, leaving owners and occupiers free to monetize it however they wish. Your data, for your benefit.

What’s more, the enabling technology can also be retrofitted, an appealing concept for everyone no matter their generation, particularly as energy prices continue to skyrocket. Soon, enjoying real time operational usage of the buildings we live in with tacit and meaningful impact will become a way of life.

The potential for the AI-powered Green Building Intelligence Network is truly global. In its full fruition the idea of ESG conscious self-sufficient communities is as much about security as it is about positive climate action, countering the adverse effects from global geopolitical challenges, epidemics and cost of living crises. It gives us the power, to not only think about our relationship with the built world, but to actively do something about it to improve not only our lives but that of the communities we live in and the earth itself.