On 30 March, Răzvan Nica, CEO and Founder of CarbonTool, joined senior leaders from Globalworth Romania, One United Properties, Speedwell, nHood and Cushman & Wakefield at the Ziarul Financiar conference “Trends in the Office and Construction Market – The New Normal: Bucharest Builds Again.”

 

The panel, focused on who builds, who leases and who invests in Bucharest offices beyond 2026 , included a substantial discussion on ESG, green certifications and carbon footprint. Răzvan Nica’s contribution reframed carbon measurement not as a compliance exercise, but as a practical management tool with direct business implications.

 

 

What carbon footprint actually measures

 

Carbon footprint, as Răzvan explained during the panel, is not a standalone sustainability metric. It is an aggregator, a single indicator that consolidates energy efficiency, maintenance costs, waste management, well-being and mobility, including proximity to public transport, into one comparable figure and that is what makes it useful.

 

In the built environment, this means being able to compare buildings, track performance over time and communicate that performance clearly to the people who need to make decisions based on it. Some of CarbonTool’s clients are already exploring the use of carbon per square metre per year as a data point in conversations with prospective tenants, a direction that reflects where the market is heading, even as the infrastructure for systematic building-to-building comparison is still developing.

 

 

Embodied carbon and the role of EPDs

 

Beyond operational performance, Răzvan Nica addressed the dimension of embodied carbon, i.e. the total carbon associated with all materials used, energy consumed and equipment installed during the construction process itself. This is a more complete picture of a building’s environmental impact, one that begins well before the first occupant moves in.

 

A key tool in this area is the Environmental Product Declaration (EPD), a standardised document that provides impact coefficients for construction products and materials, enabling specifiers and developers to make informed, evidence-based choices about the most sustainable options. EPDs are already in use in the construction industry and, as Răzvan noted, they are expected to play an increasing role in enabling meaningful comparisons between buildings.

 

 

The split incentive problem and how data helps solve it

 

One of the structural challenges in office sustainability is that owners invest in performance while tenants capture much of the benefit. Carbon data provides a common language for addressing this divide. When both parties can see the same figures, e.g. consumption, emissions, operational costs, the conversation about shared responsibility becomes grounded in evidence rather than negotiation.

 

This is the logic behind the Green Lease model, which Răzvan Nica referenced: a framework in which owners and tenants both assume obligations toward performance improvement. The carbon footprint reported by each party at year end is a joint outcome. Making that visible, measurable and consistent is what CarbonTool is built to support.

 

 

Performance as the new baseline

 

As Bucharest’s office market enters a new supply cycle, the buildings that win will be those that can demonstrate performance with data to investors, to tenants, to financial institutions. ESG is not a facade when it is backed by numbers. And the numbers are increasingly available to those who have built the infrastructure to collect and use them.

 

Read more statements in Ziarul Financiar