5/14/2021 Q&A: What Is the Future of Green Building?

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Blog Q&A: What Is the Future of Green Building?

Q&A: What Is the Future of Green

Building?
by Andrew Steer (WRI) - 11 June 2018

This Q&A with WRI President and

CEO Andrew Steer originally
appeared at World Green Building
Council.

What if we saw every building as an

opportunity for sustainable
development?

That is just what they are. Buildings

consume water and electricity—one-
third of global energy consumption
is in buildings—as well as the raw
materials used in construction.
Green buildings are a huge opportunity for
sustainable development. Unsplash/Sandra
Schuh

More and more builders and cities are realizing how much is to be gained. The
green building movement is growing. In the United States, for example, the
percentage of commercial office space certified by LEED or Energy Star has risen
to 38 percent in 2017 from less than 5 percent in 2005.

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But incremental, "building-by-building" change won't be enough to capture green

buildings' spectacular potential. Andrew Steer, president and CEO of World
Resources Institute, is the opening plenary keynote speaker at the upcoming
World Green Building Council Congress. The World Green Building Council
(WGBC) asked him some questions about how to catalyze the green building
movement worldwide.

WGBC: What role do you see for the green buildings industry in
facing challenges with respect to the global economy and natural
resources?

By 2050, the global floor area in buildings is expected to double to more than 415
billion square meters, and buildings' energy demand may increase by as much as
50 percent. As assets with useful lives average 50-100 years, buildings lock in
decisions today like few others, especially in high-growth regions like India,
China and Africa.

Meanwhile, the buildings sector is a laggard in climate action. Average energy

consumption per person in the global buildings sector remains practically
unchanged since 1990 despite the fact that building energy upgrades represent
the single largest source of low-cost emissions reductions and create significant
equity benefits by reducing energy poverty. Three-quarters of NDCs overlook
buildings and two-thirds of countries still have no mandatory building energy
codes, leaving the easiest greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions on the table.

To keep global temperature increase to even 2 degrees Celsius requires an

entirely different level of ambition. The IEA 2-Degree Scenario requires that
building-related CO2 emissions drop by 85 percent from current levels by 2060.
This means all new buildings must be zero carbon by 2030, and all new and
existing buildings must be net zero carbon by 2050.

What do you see as the biggest challenge for the green buildings
industry to transform the built environment globally?

Unlike in other sectors, the technology and design techniques for zero carbon
buildings are both available and cost-competitive: passive design principles,
energy-efficient equipment and storage, carbon-negative materials and a
combination of onsite and offsite production of clean energy. But it's clear we
need to move past the incrementalism of change "permit-by-permit" and instead

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shift market expectations—in prominent, high-growth places—of what acceptable

building assets look like. This entails a systems-based decarbonization approach
that:

1. Integrates building envelope, building equipment, electrical loads,

controls, renewable energy and storage into new construction and
renovation designs.
2. Integrates buildings thermally and electrically within their
community/district.
3. Connects buildings to the grid.
As a follow up, can you tell us about three shining examples of how
innovation in green buildings is addressing the carbon challenge?

China is undergoing massive urbanization, which could increase buildings'

energy use by as much as 40 percent in the next 15 years. Now, the question is:
How can those responsible for building construction—namely, cities, towns and
developers—deliver on the lofty goals set by the national government? One
shining example is Shanghai's Changning District, which recently put in place an
energy monitoring platform that now tracks 160 of the district's 165 public
buildings. Thanks to the project, 32 buildings have been retrofitted to achieve an
average 20 percent energy savings. To encourage the remaining 133 public
buildings to renovate, the district is considering using a third-party ranking
system to rate buildings on their energy performance, a strategy that's proved
effective in other locales. The district also provided 23 million yuan ($3.34
million) in subsidies to help building managers make their buildings more
efficient. This lowered the payback period for the private sector, which in turn
encouraged them to invest an additional 140 million yuan ($20.33 million).

WRI Ross Center is the coordinating partner of the Building Efficiency

Accelerator (BEA), a Sustainable Energy for All public-private partnership with
30 partner jurisdictions and over 35 technical partners. The BEA works to
support the goal of doubling the rate of energy-efficiency improvement
worldwide by 2030. Within this context, the FSCI and BEA partnerships leverage
the building sector expertise of the BEA with the business model expertise of the
FSCI to help cities from the idea stage of municipal retrofits through to
implementation.

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The Financing Sustainable Cities Initiative recently studied 16 case studies of

municipal retrofit programs and projects to build a map of the elements involved
in successful business models. We found that cities deployed a wide range of
mechanisms, including energy tariff levies, municipal bonds and concessional
finance. Most importantly, we found that successful cities utilized some public
budgets, such as existing facilities maintenance funds, as a part of their overall
business model. At recent workshops in Mexico City and Medellin, Columbia, we
heard about the different approaches cities are using, including our host, which is
funding its first round of retrofits with a targeted climate fund and exploring
other options to make changes to a larger set of municipal buildings.

Andrew Steer will be delivering the Opening Plenary Keynote presentation

'Building a Better Tomorrow' on Wednesday 6 June at Building Lasting Change
2018 with WorldGBC Congress Canada. For more information and to register,
visit www.cagbc.org/blc2018

TAGS:
cities, energy efficiency, sustainable cities

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