Mention the words “commercial real estate,” and what might come to mind are “buildings” followed by “land.” But the increasing demand for power has placed greater burdens on grids. This, in turn, has meant disruptions and outages.

According to a recently released JLL report, buildings account for 30% of final energy consumption. At the same time, “they also represent one of the most adaptable and underutilized levers in the energy value chain,” the analysts pointed out.

As of now, commercial real estate owners and operators face the following energy issues.

Load growth and electrification. Demand for electricity continues increasing across power-intensive real estate—think data centers and automation. Power availability (or lack thereof) can constrain growth.

Legacy grid constraints. Yesterday’s grids weren’t created to handle today’s huge demands. Bottlenecks are common, as are uncertainties around interconnection timelines and grid capacity.

Clean energy patchworks. While renewables have been touted as a way to relieve increasing loads, regulations governing their use aren’t consistent across regions. This means mismatches between where supply is located and where demand is growing.

Decentralization and digitalization. On-site generation, battery storage, and software-driven energy management are in play, allowing buildings to reduce exposure to volatility, manage peak loads, and improve resilience.

The report suggests a few ways in which buildings—and by extension, their owners—can address today’s energy constraints: “through the way they use energy, and through the way they supply energy.”

Intelligent Demand. This focuses on managing electricity consumption with digital controls and electrification. The result is a reduction in peak demand, shifting loads to lower-stress and lower-usage periods, and boosting system efficiency.

Optimized Supply. Such efforts can involve solar battery energy storage, small-scale renewables, and microgrids that maintain operations during outages.

Revenue Opportunities. Where market structures allow, building owners and operators can use energy arbitrage, capacity payments and grid services that support on-site generation and storage.

The report concluded by noting the alignment among CRE value creation, power availability, and on-site energy capabilities. As such, “buildings that can actively manage demand and deploy on-site generation and storage are better positioned to operate through system constraints and volatility, while those that cannot face growing exposure to delay, cost and reliability risk,” the analysts wrote.

This requires energy to be embedded in the asset rather than treated as a utility expense. The result is a “widening divide between properties that can secure power as a competitive advantage and those for which power becomes a binding constraint,” the report said.