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Nurturing greener tenants for more sustainable buildings

Posted on March 28, 2022 by dishanth

Switching lights off when they are not in use, turning up the temperature on air-conditioning, and saving water – these may seem like small actions, but they are vital to the fight against climate change.

Today, buildings are responsible for nearly 40 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions, with their construction and operations contributing 11 per cent and 28 per cent respectively. Efforts to improve their sustainability are not going far enough, and buildings remain “off track” to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 according to a report by the International Energy Agency (IEA) in November.

Managing climate-friendly and energy-efficient buildings is crucial to achieving the Paris Agreement’s goal of keeping global warming under 2 degrees Celsius, and preferably under 1.5°C, but there are many challenges.

“Since 2010, rising demand for energy services in buildings – particularly electricity to power cooling equipment, appliances and connected devices – has been outpacing energy efficiency and decarbonisation gains,” the IEA said. “Very high temperatures and prolonged heatwaves set records in many countries, driving up demand for air-conditioning.”

The United Nations, in its latest climate assessment published in February, added that if greenhouse gas emissions remain high, all Asian regions studied in the report – Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, South Korea, Japan and Vietnam – will be affected by dangerously high heat and humidity levels, sea level rise, flooding and other physical climate risks.

As governments aim to meet ambitious climate goals, they will increasingly look to the building sector to reduce its impact on the environment.

By accelerating digitalisation and embracing the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and other innovative digital technologies, we can achieve smarter, healthier and more sustainable buildings.

Chang Sau Sheong, chief executive, SP Digital

In Singapore, for instance, buildings make up over a third of the country’s electricity consumption. The city-state’s Building and Construction Authority (BCA) notes that the built environment plays a “major role” in helping to achieve the national sustainability agenda to tackle climate change and global warming.

This presents huge opportunities, and challenges, for landlords trying to drive efficiencies in commercial buildings. Technology is key in this effort, according to SP Digital, the digital arm of SP Group, a utilities group in Asia Pacific that focuses on low carbon, smart energy solutions.

“By accelerating digitalisation and embracing the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and other innovative digital technologies, we can achieve smarter, healthier and more sustainable buildings,” said Chang Sau Sheong, chief executive of SP Digital.

Mindset shifts key to green buildings

Setting regulatory benchmarks and fiscal policies has helped to green buildings and boost efficiencies. Technologies and smart systems have also improved sustainability. But changing the behaviour of landlords and tenants could prove to be the biggest hurdle yet.

Dr Clayton Miller, assistant professor at the National University of Singapore (NUS) who leads its Building and Urban Data Science Lab, told Eco-Business that there are many underused green building technologies, including innovative cooling systems that tap on high temperature radiant, desiccant dehumidification and mixed-mode ventilation.

“There are too many decision-makers who want to play it safe and stick with conventional systems, because they are afraid that trying something different will bring problems,” he said.

Some property owners and landlords may be put off by the costs and difficulties of retrofitting older buildings for sustainability. For example, installing green technologies may require space that is scarce in buildings not designed for them.

“With the myriad of green technologies out there, one of the key challenges that building owners may face is simply how and where to start the retrofitting process,” added Associate Professor Kua Harn Wei, of the Department of the Built Environment, NUS School of Design and Environment.

A smart way to achieve sustainability

Tenants may be stymied by a lack of data too, noted Chang. “Most landlords and property owners provide monthly utility bills, which makes it challenging for tenants to know how and where to best focus their efficiency efforts, and track how they are faring,” according to Chang.

A typical office in Singapore expends most – 60 per cent – of its energy on cooling, according to BCA. Lighting takes up 15 per cent of consumption.

GET TenantCare is a smart and automated tenant submetering solution designed to help landlords and property owners efficiently manage tenant utilities consumption. [Click to enlarge] Image: SP Digital.

To give tenants and landlords more granular data to manage their energy and water use, SP Digital created Green Energy Tech (GET) TenantCare, a smart and automated tenant submetering solution. Tenants and landlords can get visibility of their utilities consumption in granularity of 30-minute intervals, unlocking more ways to save electricity and water. The platform not only increases operational efficiency, but can improve tenant engagement that will drive sustainability efforts, Chang said.

As a tenant, for instance, you can better understand how you use electricity, get alerted to unusual usage earlier, find out which of your equipment is using a lot of energy, whether through faults or inefficiency, and make changes to lower your energy consumption.

“If you’re a landlord, you can use our solution to automatically calculate your tenants’ energy use intensity, based on their units’ energy usage and gross floor area. You can identify which tenants are using more electricity than expected and engage with them to persuade them to adopt more energy-efficient equipment or habits,” Chang said.

Smart technologies have other advantages. With GET TenantCare’s automated meter readings, landlords do not have to deploy manpower to check on and read the meters. This also eliminates human errors in the readings.

Smart building management systems, connected to motion and other occupancy sensors and weather forecasting systems, can automatically adjust air-conditioning temperatures, switch off unneeded lights, and do more to save electricity and water while maintaining comfort for occupants.

Promoting greener behaviours

With insights from smart technologies leading to quick wins in energy and water savings, landlords and tenants may be more motivated to continue on their sustainability journey.

“If people have good experiences trying out sustainable behaviours, they are likely to repeat them and form green habits over time,” Dr Sonny Rosenthal, cluster director of smart and sustainable building technologies at the Energy Research Institute at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), told Eco-Business.

Other novel systems and ideas could enable tenants and landlords to work in tandem to slash the carbon footprint of the buildings they occupy.

SP Digital’s GET Engaged solution is a digital dashboard that provides updates on buildings’ electricity and water use, and the resulting carbon emissions. When displayed in lobbies and other public areas, the information could spur tenants to make more sustainable choices.

Equipping people with relevant skills is essential too. Last year, the Singapore government launched the Sustainability in Singapore programme, which trains people from organisations to be green ambassadors.

This includes teaching them how to design effective sustainability campaigns to persuade their colleagues and other occupants in their buildings to be more environmentally friendly.

BCA chief executive Kelvin Wong explained: “As a building user myself, we tend to think that staying in green buildings alone is sufficient. But this is not true. Practising sustainable behaviour within building premises is equally important to make the most of green buildings.”

“Hand in hand, both green buildings and sustainable user behaviour would translate to lower carbon emissions, with the added advantage of monetary savings,” he added.

The BCA has also created “green lease” toolkits to guide landlords and tenants in crafting mutually-agreed-upon, sustainability-related agreements for office and retail buildings. These would set out objectives for how the building is to be improved, managed and occupied to reduce its impact on the environment.

Greener buildings go beyond providing environmental and economic benefits, Chang noted. Greener buildings can also enhance occupants’ health and overall well-being.

Source Eco Business

New York City banned gas in new buildings. Here’s what you need to know

Posted on December 17, 2021 by dishanth

The City Council on Wednesday passed a bill making New York the largest city in the United States to effectively ban the use of gas in new buildings and to turn to electricity for power.

More than 50 municipalities in California have all-electric building codes, and other cities, including Seattle and Ithaca, are advancing electrification in new buildings. But no other American city has a dense building stock like New York, which faces colder seasonal temperatures compared to most places that have adopted similar legislation.

The New York bill, which establishes a threshold for how much carbon a building can emit, limiting the use of gas, could set an example for the rest of the country, environmental advocates said.

“To think that every new iconic skyscraper on the New York City skyline will soon be built without any fossil fuel use — I think it’s a game-changing moment for the climate movement,” said Jenna Tatum, director of the Building Electrification Institute.

Mayor Bill Blasio is expected to sign the bill or let it lapse into law.

Here’s what you need to know:

What’s the point of prohibiting gas in new buildings?

Buildings are responsible for about 70% of the city’s greenhouse gas emissions, which warm the planet and threaten health.

“Furnaces, boilers and hot water heaters emit more carbon in New York City than all uses of electricity combined today, so electrifying those systems becomes our biggest way to fight climate change,” said John Mandyck, CEO of the Urban Green Council.

This measure has the potential to save about 2.1 million tons of carbon emissions by 2040, according to an estimate by the Rocky Mountain Institute. That’s equal to taking nearly half a million cars off the road.

“New Yorkers will look back years from now and say that it had a major positive impact on public health,” said LJ Portis, environmental policy and advocacy coordinator at WE ACT for Environmental Justice.

I’m planning to move to a newly built place soon. Does this mean my building won’t have gas?

Nope — the ban doesn’t take effect right away. The ban would apply to new buildings with fewer than seven stories by 2024. That extends to July 2027 for buildings with seven or more stories.

Any gut renovation that requires a new building permit would also be subject to the law. Affordable housing would be subject to the ban in 2026 and 2028, depending on whether they’re below or above seven stories.

Not every building makes the grade when it comes to energy efficiency. Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY

Dozens of all-electric buildings are already in the works around the city, providing models for future developments.

How will this affect my current apartment?

New York City is aiming to reduce carbon from existing buildings through Local Law 97, which requires owners to meet certain emissions limits starting in 2024.

Based on how quickly the state can green the grid, most building owners, especially in the commercial sector, won’t have to do much to comply. But retrofits to electrify will help other buildings meet those targets.

This policy, as well as the looming gas ban, will help to “prove the market for energy efficient and electric building technologies and develop the workforce that is needed to install and service them,” according to Amy Turner, a senior fellow at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School.

That means building owners are likely over time to find more — and more affordable — electrical options for appliances if they want to upgrade their heating systems.

So in the future, new buildings won’t have gas stoves?

That’s right (as long as the law isn’t repealed). Buildings won’t be able to use any fossil fuel-powered appliances, like gas boilers and stoves. Instead, they’ll incorporate electric or induction stoves and incorporate heat pumps that move cold or warm air into a home.

These swaps will make residents more comfortable and healthier, according to Russell Unger, a principal and co-leader of the Building Electrification Initiative at the Rocky Mountain Institute.

“The stuff coming off of these open flames is not all that different from having a car idling in your kitchen,” Unger said. “Over time, there’ll be notable improvements in air quality. There’ll be less ozone. There’ll be lower levels of particulate matter, which will reduce cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, asthma, premature mortality.”

How much will this cost me? How much will it cost my landlord?

Studies have predicted lower utility bills as a result of all-electric development — but it’s unclear what the effect would be on bills for those living in multi-family housing in New York City, which sees higher than average electricity costs.

Even with increased electric use, the average New Yorker is bound to save money on paying for new fossil fuel infrastructure like pipelines.

Some studies have shown it’s less expensive for developers to build efficient, all-electric homes than it is to build using fossil fuels, and that electric space and water heating and air conditioning results in lower costs to owners over the lifetime of the appliances.

“These policies are hugely important because they save us future costs so we don’t have to go back and fix the buildings in the future,” Samantha Wilt, a senior policy analyst focused on clean energy at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Who backed the new measure?

Local environmental and climate justice advocates pushed the measure, saying it would tamp down on the carbon released into the atmosphere, leading to a healthier planet — and healthier neighborhoods. Con Ed, the utility supplying electricity and some gas to city dwellers, also backed the bill, as did businesses that help to reduce the carbon footprint of buildings.

Environmental activists held a “die-in” outside City Hall to advocate for passage of a bill banning the use of fracked gas in new developments, Sept. 23, 2021. Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY

Supporters pointed to climate science that shows the need to eliminate dependence on fossil fuels to prevent further damage to the earth. They’re looking to pass a bill in Albany that would make New York the first state in the nation to mandate all-electric buildings.

Who opposed it?

Some big players in the real estate industry and National Grid — which provides gas to many New Yorkers — lobbied against the timeline. They warned power might not be reliable in the winter, when heat is needed, and argued it would be difficult for developers to construct large, all-electric buildings. Those interests ultimately won a longer timeline for the ban to take effect, foiling ban supporters who wanted the no-gas rule in place by 2023.

Can New York’s grid handle this change?

While Con Ed says it doesn’t expect blackouts, New Yorkers have lived through past power outages, which could take a bigger toll on people in all-electric buildings. Still, a report by the Urban Green Council found the city electric grid won’t need upgrades to handle the increased reliance on it until after 2035, when, the organization predicts, more than a third of all the building stock citywide is expected to have been electrified.

Source The City

‘If you make it, we will buy it’: governments are asking for ‘greener’ steel and concrete to build green cities

Posted on November 23, 2021 by dishanth

As pressure ramps-up to drastically shrink the carbon footprint of the world’s cities, developers and architects have been tinkering with the recipe for the type of materials that goes into a building. City-planners are banking on technology to make cheaper and greener steel and concrete, to drive down the hefty emissions of built infrastructure.

Building and construction are responsible for 39 per cent of all carbon emissions in the world, according to the International Energy Agency. Concrete, the primary component for most built infrastructure, is responsible for a huge amount of greenhouse gas emissions. The five billion tonnes of cement produced each year account for eight per cent of the world’s man-made carbon dioxide emissions. It would rank third for its emissions if it was a country. Then there is steel — whose production accounts for around seven per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.

As countries look to slash their emissions, hard-to-abate sectors like construction are facing more heat with governments joining hands and forming coalitions to signal that, moving forward, they will shift to buy low-carbon steel and concrete for public construction.

At the COP26 landmark climate summit in Glasgow, the governments of the United Kingdom, India, Germany, Canada and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), under a new coalition named the Industrial Deep Decarbonisation Initiative (IDDI), pledged to support the use of low-carbon materials in building construction. “If you make it, we will buy it,” said the five nations in a statement.

The member governments of the IDDI plan to reveal interim targets by mid-2022, to better align their procurement plans with new net-zero goals for the public construction sector. The pledge also includes requirements for members to disclose the carbon embodied in major public construction projects by 2025, said the UK COP presidency in a press release.

Within the next three years, the IDDI aims to have at least 10 countries commit to purchasing low-carbon concrete and steel.

Large steelmakers clean up their act

The public procurement of steel and concrete in the five nations currently represents between 25 to 40 per cent of the domestic market for such materials. Industry stakeholders said that the pledge is a clear market signal from some of the world’s largest steel and concrete buyers believing that it will create green demand across the supply chains of the building sector.

China, India and Japan are the world’s top steel producing countries. Image: World Steel Association

“Global construction accounts for 39 per cent of total global emissions, with buildings equivalent to the size of Paris being built every week. There is now a critical and narrow window for sector transformation,” said Jo da Silva, global director of sustainable development at Arup, a London-based engineering, architecture and city planning consultancy.

“Governments need to make companies feel confident about investing now in the processes of making low-carbon steel and concrete,” she said.

China, the world’s largest steel and concrete producer, is missing from the IDDI list. However, its top steelmaker, the China Baowu Steel Group Corp., formed its own global alliance with other steel producers last Thursday, in a bid to gather resources and exchange information in the development of low-carbon metallurgical technology.

Known as the Global Low-Carbon Metallurgical Innovation Alliance, it has more than 60 members from 15 countries. These include leading global steelmakers and mining enterprises such as Luxembourg-based ArcelorMittal, German conglomerate Thyssenkrupp and Melbourne’s BHP Group. About 20 Chinese steel companies are also part of the alliance.

Baowu has committed to carbon neutrality by 2050, a decade earlier than the Chinese government’s national target.

China’s Baowu Steel Group Corp., the world’s largest steelmaker, initiated the formation of a global alliance of steel producers last Thursday, in a bid to gather resources and exchange information in the development of low-carbon metallurgical technology. [Click to enlarge] Image: World Steel Association

Neil Martin, chief executive for property developer Lendlease’s European business, told Eco-Business that the commitment from steel producers and national authorities to seize decarbonisation opportunities is a potential game-changer for the building sector.

Need for sharper approach on embodied carbon

Lendlease currently uses a large amount of steel – what amounts to a volume sufficient for the building of 60 Eiffel Towers per annum – for its global projects. Substituting the material will make a difference for the environment, given how dirty the steel industry is.

The developer targets to be completely net zero by 2040.

“Property developers have made progress in reducing the operational carbon emissions of buildings, but here’s the rub: almost 90 per cent of building emissions are Scope 3 – indirect emissions from the production of building materials along the value chain. We still have to buy a lot of steel, concrete, aluminium and glass, but we do not have control over their production and supply lines,” said Martin.

Currently, much of the push towards greener buildings is devoted to minimising the energy needed to keep them running, but the situation is changing. During COP26, architects, mayors and property developers have been calling for green building certifications that take embodied emissions from materials into account in order to meet net-zero carbon goals.

Traditionally, steel is made by heating and melting iron ore in a blast furnace at high temperature. A by-product of the chemical reaction that takes place is carbon dioxide. Now, there are several other production methods that are cleaner, involving renewables and green hydrogen. These processes, however, are at various stages of development.

Professor Lam Khee Poh, dean of the National University of Singapore’s School of Design and Environment, and its Provost’s Chair Professor of Architecture and Building, said that strong signalling from national actors to industry matters and governments need to go beyond changing their public procurement models.

We need not and should not regard our predominantly steel and concrete jungles as the norm for cities.

Professor Lam Khee Poh, Dean of NUS School of Design and Environment, Singapore

“It is not just that the public sector is often a major customer. Yes, there are economies of scale to be gained, but more importantly, the demonstration of leadership from governments has an impact on the enactment of building codes and standards that will pave the way for a green transition,” he said.

Lam, a strong advocate for net-zero cities, said that building industries around the world typically work to existing regulations and only a handful will adopt voluntary standards to advance the field.

According to COP26 reports, between 2015 and 2020, 19 additional countries have building energy codes in place. However, most construction will still take place in countries without such codes.

“The building sector has historically been fragmented. It will take a revolutionary effort to develop a broadly accepted and comprehensive method of calculating embodied carbon that can be effectively and efficiently implemented in the design process for change to happen,” Lam said.

Better pricing for low-carbon building materials

In Southeast Asia, there is also a need to overcome the biased perception that concrete is cheap, which leads to the inertia to replace concrete use in buildings. The low cost of concrete is mainly due to the use of cheap labour in developing countries, and does not take into account the spillover costs when the production of concrete creates externalities – negative impacts on the environment, said Lam.

Referring to a recently-published McKinsey report, Lam argued that products such as carbon-cured concrete, if positioned differently, can potentially give companies an edge among environmentally conscious buyers and greater pricing power.

Timber as an alternative material should be considered too, especially for tropical cities. “We need not and should not regard our predominantly steel and concrete jungles as the norm for cities,” he said.

Yvonne Soh, executive director of the Singapore Green Building Council, told Eco-Business that the council has recently observed that there is no cost premium for using greener concrete in buildings in Singapore, based on current standards.

Soh also noted that lower-carbon options, whether concrete or steel, are already available.

“In fact, there is a lot of interest among private sector players and many are ready to take the leap to try out new materials. We do not have a lack of willing early adopters,” she said. “The key issue is regulatory barriers, because there are basic safety requirements governing the usage of structural materials in a building.”

“Building professionals must also be comfortable with using the material,” she said, drawing parallels to how governments have educated the public on the safety of the Covid-19 vaccines before they pushed for widespread adoption. “It’s not just about sticking some wallpaper on the wall. We have to ensure that [the use of low-carbon materials] does not compromise the building’s structural safety.”

The Singapore Green Building Council now conducts courses on sustainable supply chains for buildings, to encourage firms and stakeholders in the built environment sector to address environmental gaps in their sourcing and reporting. The council also initiated a pledge for the built environment industry to act on embodied carbon. As of November 2021, more than 75 organisations have signed up.

Source Eco Business

Reasons to be hopeful: the climate solutions available now

Posted on November 1, 2021October 31, 2021 by dishanth

The climate emergency is the biggest threat to civilisation we have ever faced. But there is good news: we already have every tool we need to beat it. The challenge is not identifying the solutions, but rolling them out with great speed.

Some key sectors are already racing ahead, such as electric cars. They are already cheaper to own and run in many places – and when the purchase prices equal those of fossil-fueled vehicles in the next few years, a runaway tipping point will be reached.

Electricity from renewables is now the cheapest form of power in most places, sometimes even cheaper than continuing to run existing coal plants. There’s a long way to go to meet the world’s huge energy demand, but the plummeting costs of batteries and other storage technologies bodes well.

And many big companies are realising that a failure to invest will be far more expensive as the impacts of global heating destroy economies. Even some of the biggest polluters, such as cement and steel, have seen the green writing on the wall.

Buildings are big emitters but the solution – improved energy efficiency – is simple to achieve and saves the occupants money, particularly with the cost of installing technology such as heat pumps expected to fall.

Stopping the razing of forests requires no technology at all, but it does require government action. While progress is poor – and Bolsonaro’s Brazil is going backwards – countries such as Indonesia have shown regulatory action can be effective. Protecting and restoring forests, particularly by empowering indigenous people, is a potent tool.

Recognition of the role food and farming play in driving global heating is high, and the solutions, from alternatives to meat to regenerative farming, are starting to grow. As with fossil fuels, ending vast and harmful subsidies is key, and there are glimmers of hope here, too.

In the climate crisis, every fraction of a degree matters and so every action reduces people’s suffering. Every action makes the world a cleaner and better place to live – by, for example, cutting the air pollution that ends millions of lives a year.

The real fuel for the green transition is a combination of those most valuable and intangible of commodities: political will and skill. The supply is being increased by demands for action from youth strikers to chief executives, and must be used to face down powerful vested interests, such as the fossil fuel, aviation and cattle industries. The race for a sustainable, low-carbon future is on, and the upcoming Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow will show how much faster we need to go.

Transport

Responsible for 14-28% of global greenhouse gas emissions, transport has been slow to decarbonise, and faces particular challenges in areas such as long-haul flight.

But technical solutions are available, if the will, public policy and spending are there, too. Electric cars are the most obvious: petrol and diesel vehicles will barely be produced in Europe within the decade. EV sales are accelerating everywhere, with the likes of Norway well past the tipping point, and cheaper electric vehicles coming from China have cut the fumes from buses. Meanwhile, combustion engines are ever more efficient and less polluting.

Employees on the assembly line for electric buses in Xi an, Shaanxi province, China. Photograph: Visual China Group/Getty Images

Bike and scooter schemes are growing rapidly as cities around the world embrace electric micromobility. Far cleaner ships for global freight are coming. The potential of hydrogen is growing, for cleaner trains where electrification is impractical, to be followed by ships and even, one day, planes. Manufacturers expect short-haul electric aircraft much sooner. Most of all, the pandemic has shown that a world without hypermobility is possible – and that many people will accept, or even embrace, a life where they commute and travel less. Gwyn Topham

Deforestation

Deforestation and land use change are the second-largest source of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. The destruction of the world’s forests has continued at a relentless pace during the pandemic, with millions of hectares lost, driven by land-clearing in the Brazilian Amazon.

Volunteers plant mangrove tree seedlings in a conservation area on Dupa beach, Indonesia. Photograph: Basri Marzuki/NurPhoto/REX/Shutterstock

But there are reasons for hope. The UK has put nature at the heart of its Cop26 presidency and behind the scenes, the government is pushing hard for finance and new commitments from forested nations to protect the world’s remaining carbon banks. Indonesia and Malaysia, once global hotspots of deforestation, have experienced significant falls in recent years, the result of increased restrictions on palm oil plantations. However, the 2000s soy moratorium in Brazil shows these trends are reversible. Finally, there is a growing recognition of the importance of indigenous communities to protecting the world’s forests and biodiversity. In the face of racism and targeted violence, a growing number of studies and reports show they are the best guardians of the forest. Empowering those communities will be vital to ending deforestation. Patrick Greenfield

Technology

Emissions from technology companies, including direct emissions, emissions from electricity use and other operations such as manufacturing, account for 0.3% of global carbon emissions, while emissions from cryptocurrencies is a huge emerging issue.

Mining – the process in which a bitcoin is awarded to a computer that solves a complex series of algorithms – is a deeply energy-intensive process and only gets more energy-intensive as the algorithms grow more complex. But new mining methods are lighter, environmentally. A system called “proof of stake” has a 99% lower carbon footprint.

Researchers pose for a group photo at the International Research Center of Big Data for Sustainable Development Goals in Beijing, China. The centre was inaugurated to support the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Photograph: Xinhua/REX/Shutterstock

Scrutiny of the whole sector is increasing, spearheaded by tech workers who walked out in their hundreds to join climate change marches in 2019. The companies have pledged to do better: Amazon aims to be net zero carbon by 2040 and powered with 100% renewable energy by 2025. Facebook has a target of net zero emissions for its entire supply chain by 2030 and Microsoft has pledged to become carbon negative by 2030. Apple has committed to become carbon-neutral across its whole supply chain by 2030.

They’re still falling short when it comes to delivering, but employee groups continue to push. Kari Paul

Business

For decades Exxon Mobil has arguably been corporate America’s biggest climate change denier. But this year, the activist investor Engine No 1 won three seats on the company’s board with an agenda to force the company to finally acknowledge and confront the climate crisis.

Across corporate America and all around the world there are signs of change. The Federal Reserve, the world’s most powerful central bank, is beefing up its climate team. BlackRock, the world’s biggest investor, has made environmental sustainability a core goal for the company.

This isn’t about ideology: it’s about “common sense.” According to BlackRock, failure to tackle climate change is simply bad for business. The investor calculates that 58% of the US will suffer economic decline by 2060-2080 if nothing is done.

Much more needs to be done, and some question whether corporate America can really solve this crisis without government action. But the days of denial are over – what matters now is action. Dom Rushe

Electricity

The rocketing global market price for gas has ripped through world economies, forcing factories to close, triggering blackouts in China, and threatening to cool the global economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.

But it has also spelled out a clear economic case for governments to redouble their efforts in developing homegrown, low-carbon electricity systems.

The good news is that renewable energy is ready to step up and play a greater role in electricity systems across the globe.

A woman completes paperwork by the light of solar-powered lamps in a village shop for solar products. Photograph: Kunal Gupta/Climate Visuals Countdown

The precipitous fall in the price of wind and solar energy has helped to incentivise fresh investments in electricity vehicles and energy storage technologies, such as batteries, where costs are plummeting too. Soon, wind and solar power will help to produce green hydrogen, which can be stored over long periods of time to generate electricity during days that are a little less bright or breezy.

All of these advances are made possible by cheap renewables, and will help countries to use more renewable energy too. There has never been a better time to step back from gas and go green. Jillian Ambrose

Buildings

The built environment is one of our biggest polluters, responsible for about 40% of global carbon emissions.

Over the past two decades, the carbon footprint of buildings “in use” has been greatly reduced by energy-saving technologies – better insulation, triple-glazing, and on-site renewables such as solar panels and ground-source heat pumps. Onheat pumps, the UK lags far behind: Norway, through a mixture of grants and high electricity prices, has installed more than 600 heat pumps for every 1,000 households.

As national energy grids are decarbonising, the focus is shifting to reducing the “embodied energy” of materials – which can account for up to three-quarters of a building’s emissions over its lifespan – for example by reducing the amount of concrete and steel in favour of timber.

The Vertical Forest in the Porta Nuova district in Milan. Photograph: Miguel Medina/AFP/Getty

There is also a growing movement to prioritise refurbishment and reuse over demolition, driven by the realisation that the most sustainable buildings are the ones that already exist. Oliver Wainwright

Food and farming

The hoofprint of the global livestock industry is a significant one, accounting for about 14% of total annual greenhouse gas emissions. But it is increasingly recognised and accepted by national governments.

New Zealand now has a legal commitment to reduce methane emissions from agriculture by 10% by 2030, while Denmark has passed a legally binding target to reduce climate emissions from the agricultural sector by 55% by 2030.

While global meat production is increasing, there is a growing shift towards fish and poultry, which have a comparatively lower emissions footprint than red meats. The food industry is also developing a range of lower-carbon products using plant-based proteins such as soy and pea, and insect and lab-grown meat alternatives. Tom Levitt

Manufacturing

Decarbonising the manufacturing of every product needed by a modern economy is a vast and varied task. Some sectors are well on their way. For instance, Apple, the world’s third-largest maker of mobile phones by volume, has pledged to produce net zero carbon throughout its supply chain by 2030.

For many others, advances in efficiency of factories and their products will be accelerated by machine learning and other artificial intelligence technologies that are still in their infancy. There are even hopeful signs in some of the hardest sectors to decarbonise, such as plans by Volvo to replace coal with hydrogen in the steel it uses in cars.

One of the greatest reasons for optimism is manufacturers’ increasing awareness of circular design principles. Making products easier to recycle from the start will help to cut emissions from fresh resource extraction– although a bigger question remains as to whether rich societies can reduce consumption, the most obvious way to cut emissions. Jasper Jolly

Source The Guardian

Climatech Corp and Inovues win the inaugural CapitaLand Sustainability X Challenge

Posted on June 14, 2021June 14, 2021 by dishanth

Climatech Corp and Inovues are the winners of the inaugural CapitaLand Sustainability X Challenge (CSXC) 2021, a global hunt for sustainability innovations in the built environment.

Both winners will receive S$50,000 (US$38,000) each to fund, test and implement their innovations at selected CapitaLand properties worldwide, as well as mentorship by a CapitaLand business leader.

Climatech won the Most Innovative Award for their water treatment process to treat cooling water without the use of chemicals or power, while Inovues won the High Impact Award for their insulating glass retrofit technology.

Climatech’s solution, known as the ClimaControl Quantum Resonance Water, is a novel solution that allows cooling water to be recycled for other uses in buildings, such as plant irrigation or toilet flushing. Based in Singapore, the company’s solution uses photon vibration frequency technology to treat cooling tower, achieving 60 to over 90 per cent of water savings, and one to over five per cent of energy savings.

From the United States, Inovues’ insulating glass technology reduces energy consumption to heat or cool buildings by up to 40 per cent without compromising on the luminosity indoors. The smart glass technology can be retrofitted on to existing windows, and reduces noise and heat gain inside a building by up to 10 times. Windows are the Achilles’ heel of the built environment, said one of the judges, Rushad Nanavatty, managing director or urban transformation at RMI.

The two winners will also have the chance to showcase their innovations to senior global business leaders, investors and policymakers at the annual Ecosperity Week sustainability event organised by Temasek.

“Research and innovation leading to commercialisation is a space where public and private sectors must collaborate. Research can be long-dated and involves high risk. Governments must support and fund it. Innovation and commercialisation of products of research require entrepreneurial acumen and nimble responses. This is where many enterprises have strengths,” said Minister for Sustainability and the Environment of Singapore, Grace Fu, who was the guest-of-honour at the grand finale.

Lee Chee Koon, CapitaLand’s group chief executive officer announces the CapitaLand Innovation Fund at the CapitaLand Sustainability X Challenge grand finale. Image: CapitaLand

The themes for the inaugural challenge were low carbon transition, water conservation and resilience, waste management and circular economy, and healthy and safe buildings.

The winning solutions emerged from a shortlist that included a portable, self-powered energy generator cum chiller, a thermal insulation curtain wall, a smart waste bin which uses artificial intelligence to sort waste, and an indoor air disinfection solution. All six finalists and selected participants will have a chance to pilot their innovations at selected CapitaLand properties worldwide.

At the grand finale, CapitaLand also announced a S$50 million innovation fund to support the test-bedding of sustainability and other high-tech innovations in the built environment.

Lee Chee Koon, CapitaLand’s group chief executive officer said: “The inaugural CapitaLand Sustainability X Challenge has allowed us to uncover promising innovations that we can potentially implement at our properties across the globe, and help us achieve our ambitious targets set out in our 2030 Sustainability Master Plan.”

By Sonia Sambhi

Source Eco Business

‘Cool’ roofs, cooler designs as the building industry embraces energy sustainability

Posted on June 11, 2021 by dishanth

The southwestern New Mexico town of Columbus, site of a 1916 raid by Pancho Villa, is now home to a border entry center that is powered by the sun and landscaped with recycled concrete “sponges” that harvest rainwater.

An apartment complex in Los Angeles created expressly for formerly homeless men and women has features that maximize natural light and airflow, a roof designed to minimize heat inside the units during summer, and a rooftop garden that attracts migratory birds.

And across the country in Brooklyn, e-commerce giant Etsy established its headquarters in a 200,000-square-foot building that previously housed a printing press for Jehovah’s Witnesses, then renovated and retrofitted so it is powered by renewable energy.

All three sites, spotlighted last year by the American Institute of Architects in its top-10 list of sustainable projects, reflect the expansive reach of “low-energy” design strategies and the building industry’s embrace of sustainability as a de facto imperative. They’re part of a remarkable evolution, one that could prove crucial since the building sector globally accounts for at least 40 percent of the world’s emissions of carbon dioxide — far more than transportation sources.

Formerly homeless people live at the Six, an apartment complex in the MacArthur Park neighborhood of Los Angeles designed for optimal energy efficiency. (Brooks + Scarpa)

Some advocates think the U.S. sector can achieve net-zero emissions within 20 years, a decade ahead of President Biden’s net-zero goal for the country. The administration’s initiative includes new codes and efficiency standards for homes, appliances and commercial buildings — and a clean electric grid. Dozens of cities and states are moving forward with their own measures.

“Decarbonization of the sector is inevitable,” according to Edward Mazria, founder of Architecture 2030, a nonprofit organization based in Santa Fe, N.M., that aims to reconfigure the built environment as part of the solution to global warming.

The past several years served as an “urgent call to action,” he thinks, with devastating storms and wildfires on several continents, profoundly diminished Arctic sea ice, and the highest global temperatures in recorded history. “It’s not a matter of if we transition to renewables, but whether it will be fast and well-orchestrated enough to avert irreversible climate chaos.”

In Santa Fe, N.M., architect Edward Mazria leads a nonprofit organization focused on making the built environment part of the solution to global warming. (Ramsay de Give for The Washington Post)

Since the nation’s building stock started its rapid expansion more than two centuries ago, the energy all that construction consumed and the greenhouse gases it then emitted have only increased — dramatically so.

But the numbers began changing in 2005 as building efficiency gained traction. Despite the building sector producing an additional 50 billion square feet in the past 15 years — housing, office parks, skyscrapers, hospitals, factories, schools, shopping centers and other commercial projects — its energy consumption actually dropped 5 percent and emissions fell 30 percent, data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration show.

In Mazria’s view, building “green” is not a hard sell, especially given cost-effective design approaches that can produce high-performance buildings with little to no energy consumption or emissions. Strategies include considering a structure’s shape and orientation on a site, adding “cool” roofs that reflect more sunlight and absorb less heat, and more.

“In 50 years, I’ve never heard a client say they want an inefficient building that costs more to operate and damages the environment,” Mazria said.

Sierra Atilano echoes his sentiment in Los Angeles. She is chief real estate and investment officer for Skid Row Housing Trust, which commissioned the apartment complex in the city’s MacArthur Park neighborhood where formerly homeless people, some of them veterans, now live. Passive design approaches such as the building’s exposure to prevailing winds make it 50 percent more energy efficient than conventionally designed counterparts, according to the architectural firm Brooks + Scarpa.

“Adding sustainability is a no-brainer in developing equitable housing,” Atilano said. “Affordable housing should be designed on par with market rate housing; it’s important not just for the residents but for the community at large — and the environment.”

While new construction is the obvious target for low-energy design, the American Institute of Architects also emphasizes the need to adapt and retrofit existing buildings — an especially salient point given how the pandemic has depressed demand for commercial and office space. The curriculums at the country’s leading architecture schools reflect this reality and the opportunities it offers.

“The median age of commercial buildings in the U.S. is 36, with almost a third of commercial buildings over 50 years old,” noted Erica Cochran Hameen, co-director for the Center for Building Performance and Diagnostics at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Architecture. “Knowing most of our students after graduation will work on projects that involve an existing building, it is critical to educate them on advanced retrofit and building upgrade design strategies and technologies.”

The results increasingly are quantified. There are benchmarking policies and performance metrics. The 2021 International Energy Conservation Code set new minimum efficiency standards for myriad construction elements, part of “lifecycle accountability” for a building. Jurisdictions that adopt the code’s zero-carbon approach “have an avenue to ask for annual performance data and measure on-site energy generation and off-site energy procurement,” explained Anica Landreneau, sustainable design director for the global firm HOK.

In fact, cities from Portland, Ore., to Portland, Maine, now require such data, and Landreneau sees that as a positive. “Both benchmarking and performance standards trigger retrofits, which create domestic jobs while reducing carbon emissions, increasing energy security and improving quality of life for building occupants,” she said.

The Los Angeles-based architectural firm Brooks + Scarpa designed the Six complex to minimize summer heat inside its 52 apartments. (Brooks + Scarpa)

Yet home builders have a different take on regulatory mandates, instead supporting “voluntary, above-code programs,” Jaclyn Toole of the National Home Builders Association said. “Maintaining housing affordability must be the cornerstone to any efforts to create greener and more efficient homes.”

And fossil-fuel interests continue to oppose proposals to eliminate natural gas equipment in buildings, successfully pushing legislation in at least 12 states to bar any exclusion. “Policies that would force people to replace natural gas appliances with electric ones could be burdensome to consumers and the economy, have profound impacts and costs on the electric sector and be a very costly approach for a relatively small reduction in emissions,” said Jake Rubin, a spokesman for the American Gas Association.

Environmentalists counter Rubin’s argument by emphasizing the magnitude of what energy improvements achieve in cost savings and decreased emissions — billions of metric tons in this country alone.

“Efforts by gas utilities to fight [building] electrification represent one of the biggest threats facing the planet now,” said Rachel Golden of the Sierra Club, citing a major U.N. report on methane. “Every time a new home or building is connected to the gas system … we’re expanding the use of gas.”

A clear shift seems underway, however. In California, advocates are working to get gas out of new construction through the state energy code. More than 40 cities and counties have already passed measures requiring or encouraging that fossil fuel energy be phased out in favor of building electrification, and the Sierra Club counts more than 50 other jurisdictions in the state that are weighing such policies.

Elsewhere are similar signs of transformation. Burlington, Vt., which became the nation’s first city to go all-renewable after opening a hydroelectric facility in 2014, intends to levy a carbon fee on new buildings that connect “to fossil fuel infrastructure.” In New York City, where a recent, top-to-bottom retrofit of the iconic Empire State Building nearly cut its operational carbon emissions in half, officials are considering a gas phaseout for all new construction.

Legislation is pending in Colorado to support building electrification, establish standards for energy performance and limit emissions from gas utilities. Laws to require or encourage gas-free construction are already on the books in Massachusetts and Washington, the state that is considered the vanguard of the movement.

Kjell Anderson, the director of sustainable design at LMN Architects in Seattle, helped craft that city’s new building code. The regulations, which will phase out gas in new commercial buildings, were a direct response to Seattle’s increased greenhouse emissions between 2016 and 2018.

He predicts emissions will drop each year as buildings go all-electric and the local grid adds more renewable energy. The biggest unknown is the balance required between on-site renewables, the grid and energy storage, which he says calls for region-specific approaches.

“Nearly all ‘net-zero’ buildings generate excess energy on many days, while they draw grid power at other times,” Anderson said. “With the rapid expansion of clean-energy development and the significantly reduced cost of renewables, energy flows both ways, so utilities are becoming energy managers instead of just energy generators.”

Like so many of his colleagues and contemporaries, he thinks the transition to a carbon-neutral economy must be expeditious: “The task at hand is scaling the solution — efficiency, electrification and renewable energy — to the scope and urgency of the climate crisis.”

By Ben Ikenson

Source The Washington Post

Do you have an idea to make buildings part of the fight against climate change?

Posted on November 11, 2020November 11, 2020 by dishanth

The inaugural CapitaLand Sustainability X Challenge is searching the globe for the most innovative solutions to make buildings more climate-resilient and resource-efficient.

In less than a decade, 60 per cent of the global population will live in cities. How can the built environment innovate and adapt to accommodate 360 million more people projected to live in urban areas by 2030 and build within planetary boundaries?

On Tuesday (10 November), real estate group CapitaLand launched the inaugural CapitaLand Sustainability X Challenge, a global search for innovations to make buildings more climate-resilient and resource-efficient from their initial design to construction.

Launched in conjunction with CapitaLand’s 2030 Sustainability Master Plan, the innovation challenge will source for solutions to meet its new sustainability targets.

The challenge falls under four key themes that address important pain points of the built environment: low carbon transition, water conservation and resilience, waste management and the circular economy, and healthy and safe buildings.

“Through the CXSC, we are inviting individuals and companies worldwide to contribute their impactful and scalable innovations. We are also discussing with local and international organisations on opportunities to partner us for the challenge. We look forward to working with our partners and the participants to bring great ideas to life and to co-create a more sustainable built environment across the global communities we operate in,” said Lynette Leong, chief sustainability officer of CapitaLand Group.

“In addition to tackling the challenges of lowering carbon emissions and water conservation as well as promoting circularity in our waste management practices, threats such as Covid-19 and the haze have sharpened our focus on further improving the health and safety of our building occupants and customers, beginning with elevating the indoor air quality at our properties. This will reinforce our leading position as a sustainable global real estate company,” she added.

Two winners will be selected for the High Impact Award and Most Innovative Award, and will receive up to S$50,000 (US$37,200) in project funding and mentoring.

Winning submissions will be assessed based on the impact, potential outcomes, and depth of innovation. Other judging criteria include the solutions’ ability to be scaled and deployed across the different geographies and asset types of CapitaLand’s properties.

As well as prizes for the winners, other shortlisted participants will stand a chance to trial their innovations on selected CapitaLand properties.

Shortlisted teams will pitch their projects to a panel of judges at a finale event held in May 2021. The challenge is currently accepting submissions until 1 February 2021.

Ideas for CapitaLand Sustainability X Challenge can be submitted here.

By Sonia Sambhi

Source: Eco Business