“We have a unique window of opportunity.”
That was a key finding from the first annual Global Status Report for Buildings and Construction, published in 2016 by UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) and GABC (Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction).
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A decade on, and the 11th report has just been published, and it is pretty clear that no one is rushing to secure that “window of opportunity”. The problems remain largely the same:
- rate of new construction is outpacing energy efficiency improvements, so global emissions from buildings continue to increase
- lack of investment to retrofit existing buildings
- fossil fuels continue to dominate heating and cooking
The original report called for countries, local authorities and non-state actors to “fully establish a roadmap that engages the building sector in achieving and exceeding climate goals”.
This would, among other things, “develop and implement comprehensive policy-packages, involving all stakeholders” and drive “mainstream sustainable building education and training”.
Given the current geopolitical upheaval that is disrupting so many aspects of our economic and social systems, plus the political pushback against all things net zero (despite continued public support), it seems unlikely this call to action for a roadmap is going to progress any more rapidly now than it has over the past decade.
But there is something endearingly positive about this whole series of reports: the constant reassertion that we have everything we need for the rapid and radical transition of the built environment to meet climate goals; all we need is commitment. This was succinctly put on the cover of last year’s report:
“The solutions exist. Scaling them will build on progress and cut emissions fast.”
The lack of commitment is even more befuddling given the central and essential role buildings play in our lives, every one of us, every single day. In his foreword to the current report, Martin Krause started with the words:
“Buildings shape how we live, work, and grow. They are where opportunity is built and where climate action becomes tangible in daily life.”
So much of this report I feel I could have written word for word, and the key word in that sentence is “tangible”.
So many aspects of climate action are intangible for most people. The global energy system, for example, is an opaque behemoth largely controlled by multinational corporations, far removed from anything we can directly influence, but we all feel the squeeze when our home energy bill arrives. Transportation is slightly more tangible as most people, in western countries at least, own a car, and by buying an EV, we can feel we have made our contribution every time we drive to work, although the better option would be to catch public transport, or cycle on an electric 2 wheeler, or WFH and minimise our need to travel at all.
Our buildings, especially our homes, are where all these issues collide. Consider these contrasting scenarios:
- scenario A – an owner-occupier in a well-insulated modern suburban house with solar panels on the roof, battery storage, all-electric cooking and heating, with electric cars and bikes, are essentially energy-independent and will never have to pay an energy bill again for all their daily living and local transport needs, confident they can stay comfortable regardless of the weather or escalating energy costs, with high levels of resilience and self-sufficiency
- scenario B – a renter in an old apartment block that has not been retrofitted to improve energy efficiency, and on a limited income, will be fully exposed to energy cost and supply vulnerability and almost entirely reliant on public or pay to use infrastructure for their resilience to climate change, with close to zero opportunities for self sufficiency
That’s why housing is so critical to climate action, and the current report, refreshingly, is very focused on this, with housing listed as one of seven priority actions:
“The housing sector influences a large portion of the activities of the buildings and construction sector worldwide, representing a large portion of the global building floor area and energy demand, which contributes to a large extent to the impact of the buildings and construction sector on climate change. In addition to climate change, housing affordability is a major and increasing global challenge. To ensure that actions that address one crisis do not aggravate the other and hinder progress in both, governments should consider housing affordability and the housing sector’s role in tackling climate change together.”
Which brings us neatly to another crucial and overlooked issue: the built environment is a key industrial sector in its own right, contributing to jobs and economic growth, providing infrastructure essential to other sectors, as well as supporting social wellbeing and cohesion. The opening line of the executive summary puts it this way:
“The global buildings and construction sector provide essential infrastructure for human well-being and economic activity, is an economic powerhouse and at the same time a major contributor to climate change. Innovating and transforming today’s practices in the sector can foster fair economic development, enhance safety and public health, advance social justice and cultural cohesion, and reduce waste and pollution.”
Here is another of the report’s seven priority actions:
“The role of the buildings and construction sector in the overall strategy to address climate change needs to be systematically recognised and made actionable. Governments need to develop extensive building strategies within their NDC [nationally determined contributions, part of the COP process], including actions and targets for building energy codes and energy supply, efficiency of appliances, green building certifications, material supply chain and circularity, urban planning, and finance.”
My conclusion? We have enough roadmaps to a sustainable built environment to get lost with.
We don’t need another roadmap; there is more than enough information already documented to explain the actions necessary. Anyway, we are already on the road and have made some good progress; we just need to pick up speed and commit to breaking a few of the established “best practice” road rules.
So, back to the “countries, local authorities and non-state actors” that the report calls on to initiate these actions.
National governments are, of course, critical to the process, but any illusion that they are going to set the pace through mandatory policy and regulations needs to be forgotten – just look at the trajectory graphs in the report, especially in the current volatile political environment. Local authorities have been doing some excellent stuff in many places, and in many ways, they are better placed than national governments to influence outcomes on the ground, as they typically control planning and building approvals, but away from the wealthiest parts of cities, they tend to be under resourced and forced to focus on pothole issues.
Which leaves the non-state actors, and in case you haven’t realised it, that means you – any individual, business or trade association working in the built environment. We cannot claim ignorance. We cannot claim a lack of resources. We cannot claim that we need to wait for a silver bullet; we have all the proven technologies we need. What we have is a lack of commitment.
Once we figure out how to flip that, the pace of the transition will astonish even the most optimistic climate activists (like me). How can I be so confident?
Back in 2019, I heard Christiane Figueres give this fab explanation of why changing the UK Climate Change Act from an 80 per cent reduction to a 100 per cent (for example, to net zero) was so crucial.
“I think that is important not just because it ups 20 per cent, but rather because there is a predictable psychological effect. If it’s 80 per cent, you can predict that many cities and corporations will want to squeeze into the 20 per cent, that is not a reduction. So, by going to 100 per cent, that sends a very strong signal that there is actually no exception. This is for every corporation, every sector, for every citizen, every city. Therefore, from a policy perspective, it sends a much stronger signal to detonate a huge number of innovations, policies and innovative technologies that I think will help the UK, and other economies as well, reach the carbon neutrality target, mark my word, before 2050.”
Less than a decade later, the current seismic shift to electric vehicles is evidence of that effect kicking in. Can buildings and construction replicate that? Absolutely (and apart from anything else, there is a substantial economic incentive for the market leader in that transition). I’m into securing that window, are you?