Masking the true scale of action needed to avert Climate Change is increasingly obvious to many observers around the world. Here is Kevin Anderson, University of Manchester with his own perception of the issue.
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IPCC’s conservative nature masks true scale of action needed to avert catastrophic climate change
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) synthesis report recently landed with an authoritative thump, giving voice to hundreds of scientists endeavouring to understand the unfolding calamity of global heating. What’s changed since the last one in 2014? Well, we’ve dumped an additional third of a trillion tonnes of CO₂ into the atmosphere, primarily from burning fossil fuels. While world leaders promised to cut global emissions, they have presided over a 5% rise.
The new report evokes a mild sense of urgency, calling on governments to mobilise finance to accelerate the uptake of green technology. But its conclusions are far removed from a direct interpretation of the IPCC’s own carbon budgets (the total amount of CO₂ scientists estimate can be put into the atmosphere for a given temperature rise).
The report claims that, to maintain a 50:50 chance of warming not exceeding 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, CO₂ emissions must be cut to “net-zero” by the “early 2050s”. Yet, updating the IPCC’s estimate of the 1.5°C carbon budget, from 2020 to 2023, and then drawing a straight line down from today’s total emissions to the point where all carbon emissions must cease, and without exceeding this budget, gives a zero CO₂ date of 2040.
If emissions stay at their current levels, we will exhaust the 50% chance of 1.5°C in 9 years. If we begin to immediately cut emissions following the blue line, then to stay within the carbon budget for 50:50 chance of not exceeding 1.5°C we need zero global emissions by 2040. The vertical axis represents how much carbon is emitted each year – note the pandemic-related blip in 2020. Kevin Anderson / Climate Uncensored, Author provided
A full description of the above chart is available here.
Given it will take a few years to organise the necessary political structures and technical deployment, the date for eliminating all CO₂ emissions to remain within 1.5°C of warming comes closer still, to around the mid-2030s. This is a strikingly different level of urgency to that evoked by the IPCC’s “early 2050s”. Similar smoke and mirrors lie behind the “early 2070s” timeline the IPCC conjures for limiting global heating to 2°C.
IPCC science embeds colonial attitudes
For over two decades, the IPCC’s work on cutting emissions (what experts call “mitigation”) has been dominated by a particular group of modellers who use huge computer models to simulate what may happen to emissions under different assumptions, primarily related to price and technology. I’ve raised concerns before about how this select cadre, almost entirely based in wealthy, high-emitting nations, has undermined the necessary scale of emission reductions.
In 2023, I can no longer tiptoe around the sensibilities of those overseeing this bias. In my view, they have been as damaging to the agenda of cutting emissions as Exxon was in misleading the public about climate science. The IPCC’s mitigation report in 2022 did include a chapter on “demand, services and social aspects” as a repository for alternative voices, but these were reduced to an inaudible whisper in the latest report’s influential summary for policymakers.
The specialist modelling groups (referred to as Integrated Assessment Modelling, or IAMs) have successfully crowded out competing voices, reducing the task of mitigation to price-induced shifts in technology – some of the most important of which, like so-called “negative emissions technologies”, are barely out of the laboratory.
The IPCC offers many “scenarios” of future low-carbon energy systems and how we might get there from here. But as the work of academic Tejal Kanitkar and others has made clear, not only do these scenarios prefer speculative technology tomorrow over deeply challenging policies today (effectively a greenwashed business-as-usual), they also systematically embed colonial attitudes towards “developing nations”.
With few if any exceptions, they maintain current levels of inequality between developed and developing nations, with several scenarios actually increasing the levels of inequality. Granted, many IAM modellers strive to work objectively, but they do so within deeply subjective boundaries established and preserved by those leading such groups.
If we step outside the rarefied realm of IAM scenarios that leading climate scientist Johan Rockström describes as “academic gymnastics that have nothing to do with reality”, it’s clear that not exceeding 1.5°C or 2°C will require fundamental changes to most facets of modern life.
Starting now, to not exceed 1.5°C of warming requires 11% year-on-year cuts in emissions, falling to nearer 5% for 2°C. However, these global average rates ignore the core concept of equity, central to all UN climate negotiations, which gives “developing country parties” a little longer to decarbonise.
Include equity and most “developed” nations need to reach zero CO₂ emissions between 2030 and 2035, with developing nations following suit up to a decade later. Any delay will shrink these timelines still further.
Most IAM models ignore and often even exacerbate the obscene inequality in energy use and emissions, both within nations and between individuals. As the International Energy Agency recently reported, the top 10% of emitters accounted for nearly half of global CO₂ emissions from energy use in 2021, compared with 0.2% for the bottom 10%. More disturbingly, the greenhouse gas emissions of the top 1% are 1.5 times those of the bottom half of the world’s population.
So where does this leave us? In wealthier nations, any hope of arresting global heating at 1.5 or 2°C demands a technical revolution on the scale of the post-war Marshall Plan. Rather than relying on technologies such as direct air capture of CO₂ to mature in the near future, countries like the UK must rapidly deploy tried-and-tested technologies.
Retrofit housing stock, shift from mass ownership of combustion-engine cars to expanded zero-carbon public transport, electrify industries, build new homes to Passivhaus standard, roll-out a zero-carbon energy supply and, crucially, phase out fossil fuel production.
Three decades of complacency has meant technology on its own cannot now cut emissions fast enough. A second, accompanying phase, must be the rapid reduction of energy and material consumption.
Given deep inequalities, this, and deploying zero-carbon infrastructure, is only possible by re-allocating society’s productive capacity away from enabling the private luxury of a few and austerity for everyone else, and towards wider public prosperity and private sufficiency.
For most people, tackling climate change will bring multiple benefits, from affordable housing to secure employment. But for those few of us who have disproportionately benefited from the status quo, it means a profound reduction in how much energy we use and stuff we accumulate.
The question now is, will we high-consuming few make (voluntarily or by force) the fundamental changes needed for decarbonisation in a timely and organised manner? Or will we fight to maintain our privileges and let the rapidly changing climate do it, chaotically and brutally, for us?
The UN issues a would-be final warning based on scientists recently delivered their ‘final warning’ on the climate crisis and a survival plan for the world. Here it is as published by EURACTIV.
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Scientists deliver ‘final warning’ on climate crisis
UN secretary general, António Guterres, said: “This report is a clarion call to massively fast-track climate efforts by every country and every sector and on every timeframe. Our world needs climate action on all fronts: everything, everywhere, all at once.” [EPA-EFE/JUSTIN LANE]
IPCC report says only swift and drastic action can avert irrevocable damage to the planet, reports The Guardian, EURACTIV’s media partner.
Scientists have delivered a “final warning” on the climate crisis, as rising greenhouse gas emissions push the world to the brink of irrevocable damage that only swift and drastic action can avert.
The comprehensive review of human knowledge of the climate crisis took hundreds of scientists eight years to compile and runs to thousands of pages, but boiled down to one message: act now, or it will be too late.
The UN secretary general, António Guterres, said: “This report is a clarion call to massively fast-track climate efforts by every country and every sector and on every timeframe. Our world needs climate action on all fronts: everything, everywhere, all at once.”
In sober language, the IPCC set out the devastation that has already been inflicted on swathes of the world. Extreme weather caused by climate breakdown has led to increased deaths from intensifying heatwaves in all regions, millions of lives and homes destroyed in droughts and floods, millions of people facing hunger, and “increasingly irreversible losses” in vital ecosystems.
Monday’s final instalment, called the synthesis report, is almost certain to be the last such assessment while the world still has a chance of limiting global temperature rises to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, the threshold beyond which our damage to the climate will rapidly become irreversible.
Kaisa Kosonen, a climate expert at Greenpeace International, said: “This report is definitely a final warning on 1.5C. If governments just stay on their current policies, the remaining carbon budget will be used up before the next IPCC report [due in 2030].”
More than 3bn people already live in areas that are “highly vulnerable” to climate breakdown, the IPCC found, and half of the global population now experiences severe water scarcity for at least part of the year. In many areas, the report warned, we are already reaching the limit to which we can adapt to such severe changes, and weather extremes are “increasingly driving displacement” of people in Africa, Asia, North, Central and South America, and the south Pacific.
All of those impacts are set to increase rapidly, as we have failed to reverse the 200-year trend of rising greenhouse gas emissions, despite more than 30 years of warnings from the IPCC, which published its first report in 1990.
The world heats up in response to the accumulation of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, so every year in which emissions continue to rise eats up the available “carbon budget” and means much more drastic cuts will be needed in future years.
Yet there is still hope of staying within 1.5C, according to the report. Hoesung Lee, the chair of the IPCC, said: “This synthesis report underscores the urgency of taking more ambitious action and shows that, if we act now, we can still secure a livable sustainable future for all.”
Temperatures are now about 1.1C above pre-industrial levels, the IPCC found. If greenhouse gas emissions can be made to peak as soon as possible, and are reduced rapidly in the following years, it may still be possible to avoid the worst ravages that would follow a 1.5C rise.
Richard Allan, a professor of climate science at the University of Reading, said: “Every bit of warming avoided due to the collective actions pulled from our growing, increasingly effective toolkit of options is less worse news for societies and the ecosystems on which we all depend.”
Guterres called on governments to take drastic action to reduce emissions by investing in renewable energy and low-carbon technology. He said rich countries must try to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions “as close as possible to 2040”, rather than waiting for the 2050 deadline most have signed up to.
He said: “The climate timebomb is ticking. But today’s report is a how-to guide to defuse the climate timebomb. It is a survival guide for humanity. As it shows, the 1.5C limit is achievable.”
John Kerry, the US special presidential envoy for climate, said: “Today’s message from the IPCC is abundantly clear: we are making progress, but not enough. We have the tools to stave off and reduce the risks of the worst impacts of the climate crisis, but we must take advantage of this moment to act now.”
Europeans trail the pack in trusting their governments to take the necessary actions to fight climate change, while an overwhelming majority fears a climate catastrophe if they fail to step up, an EIB-BVA poll that compared responses from across the …
Monday’s “synthesis report” is the final part of the sixth assessment report (AR6) by the IPCC, which was set up in 1988 to investigate the climate and provide scientific underpinning to international policy on the crisis.
The first three sections of AR6, published between August 2021 and April 2022, covered the physical science behind the climate crisis, and warned irreversible changes were now almost inevitable; section two covered the impacts, such as the loss of agriculture, rising sea levels, and the devastation of the natural world; and the third covered the means by which we can cut greenhouse gases, including renewable energy, restoring nature and technologies that capture and store carbon dioxide.
The “synthesis report” contains no new science, but draws together key messages from all of the preceding work to form a guide for governments. The next IPCC report is not due to be published before 2030, making this report effectively the scientific gold standard for advice to governments in this crucial decade.
The final section of AR6 was the “summary for policymakers”, written by IPCC scientists but scrutinised by representatives of governments around the world, who can – and did – push for changes. The Guardian was told that in the final hours of deliberations at the Swiss resort of Interlaken over the weekend, the large Saudi Arabian delegation, of at least 10 representatives, pushed at several points for the weakening of messages on fossil fuels, and the insertion of references to carbon capture and storage, touted by some as a remedy for fossil fuel use but not yet proven to work at scale.
In response to the report, Peter Thorne, the director of the Icarus climate research centre at Maynooth University in Ireland, said next year global temperatures could breach the 1.5C limit, though this did not mean the limit had been breached for the long term.
“We will, almost regardless of the emissions scenario given, reach 1.5C in the first half of the next decade,” he said. “The real question is whether our collective choices mean we stabilise around 1.5C or crash through 1.5C, reach 2C and keep going.”
Industrialization, population growth, and urbanization are all trends driving the explosive growth of the construction industry. Creating buildings to house people and operate industry, together with building infrastructure to provide public services, requires prodigious quantities of energy and materials. Most of these virgin materials are non-renewable, and resource shortages caused by the development of the built environment are becoming increasingly inevitable. The gradually evolved circular economy (CE) is considered a way to ease the depletion of resources by extending service life, increasing efficiency, and converting waste into resources. However, the circularity of construction materials shows heavy regional distinctness due to the difference in spatial contexts in the geographical sense, resulting in the same CE business models (CEBMs) not being adapted to all regions. To optimize resource loops and formulate effective CEBMs, it is essential to understand the relationship between space and CE in the built environment. This paper reviews existing publications to summarize the research trends, examine how spatial features are reflected in the circularity of materials, and identify connections between spatial and CE clues. We found that the majority of contributors in this interdisciplinary field are from countries with middle to high levels of urbanization. Further, the case analysis details the material dynamics in different spatial contexts and links space and material cycles. The results indicate that the spatial characteristics can indeed influence the circularity of materials through varying resource cycling patterns. By utilizing spatial information wisely can help design locally adapted CEBMs and maximize the value chain of construction materials.
Introduction
Significant demand for natural resources has arisen with the massive expansion of the cities and the rising population worldwide. The development of the built environment is the largest consumer of resources, consuming approximately 35–45% of materials and contributing 40% of global GHG emissions associated with material use (Hertwich et al. 2020; Mhatre et al. 2021). The ensuing resource exploration and related environmental impacts have intensified. It is estimated that the global consumption of building materials has tripled from 2000 to 2017 and produced 30–40% of the world’s solid waste and nearly 5 Gt CO2 emissions, or 10% of global annual emissions (EMF 2015; Pomponi and Moncaster 2017; Hertwich et al. 2020; López Ruiz et al. 2020; Huang et al. 2020).
The built environment is the physical surroundings created by humans for activities, ranging from personal places to large-scale urban settlements that often include buildings, cultural landscapes, and their supporting infrastructure (Moffatt and Kohler 2008; Hollnagel 2014). Opoku (2015) points out that the built environment is not only the physical environment but also the interaction of people in the local community and their cultural experiences. The physical constituents of which differ significantly from other products in that they are characterized by long lifetimes, numerous stakeholders, and hundreds of components and ancillary materials interacting dynamically in the spatial and temporal dimensions (Hart et al. 2019). The inherent complexity within the built environment is seen as a challenge for sustainable urban transition (Pomponi and Moncaster 2017).
Circular economy (CE) is one of the essential conditions and solutions for fostering and promoting sustainability (Geissdoerfer et al. 2017). The CE is an economic or industrial concept that distinguishes itself from the traditional linear economy of unsustainability. It is often understood as a restorative and regenerative economic model that includes three types of business models (CE business models/CEBMs): (1) those that increase resource efficiency and reduce resource consumption (narrowing); (2) those that promote reuse and extended service life through repair, remanufacture, upgrades and retrofits (slowing); and (3) those that convert waste into resources by recycling materials (closing) (Stahel 2016; Kirchherr et al. 2017; Figge et al. 2018; Geisendorf and Pietrulla 2018; Gallego-Schmid et al. 2020). It is also well known that urban systems often exhibit linear material flows and inefficient use of resources (Huang and Hsu 2003). Turning linear practices into circularity and maximizing the utility and value of resources is becoming a new model for production and consumption to protect the environment, mitigate climate change, and conserve resources (Cheshire 2019; Harris et al. 2021; Zeng et al. 2022). But incorrect policy formulation and thoughtless pursuit of CE strategies can negatively affect (Corvellec et al. 2021). Many voices currently argue that CE lacks any actual consensus on the magnitude of the economic, social, and environmental “win–win-win” benefits (Aguilar-Hernandez et al. 2021) and even leads to more significant environmental impacts, economic unsuccess, and employment losses (Spoerri et al. 2009; Schröder et al. 2020; Blum et al. 2020).
Circularity in the built environment refers to an approximation in terms of the materiality of immobile elements of the built environment, such as buildings and infrastructures, and their dynamics. These elements are predominantly composed of bulk building materials, mainly non-metallic mineral materials (Schiller et al. 2017b; Gontia et al. 2018; Yang et al. 2020). Despite few products are manufactured, purchased, disposed of, and recycled in the same geographic location in today’s global market (Skene 2018), the transportation distances of these bulk building materials are limited compared to other types of products due to their low specific value-added (Schiller et al. 2017a). Therefore, Schiller et al. (2017a) point out that analyses on (also circular) material flow in the built environment should be applied regionally, which also applies to studies of the availability and security of the supply of natural raw materials in the built environment (Schiller et al. 2020). It can be concluded that the regional context or the spatial context in the geographical sense (Scholl et al. 1996), in which the built environment is integrated, has a decisive influence on material flows in general and their circularity in particular.
Space is a central concept in geography that broadly consists of two distinctive interpretations: a fundamental attribute of reality (often used with time) and a counting term that denotes human conceptual constructs borne of individual experience and societal factors (Newell and Cousins 2015; Grossner 2017). Spatiality and space are two frequently confused concepts. In contrast to space, spatiality is spatial practices rather than an exogenously given and absolute coordinate system that refers to the ongoing processes and imaginations of making space/materials, regulating behaviors, and creating experiences (Mayhew 2015; Kobayashi 2017). Space is a more relevant core term than spatiality in discussing the built environment in the physical sense rather than the formation process. The importance of space in the circularity of the built environment has been implicitly mentioned in many studies on spatial structure and land use planning (Remøy et al. 2019; Lanau and Liu 2020; Gallego-Schmid et al. 2020). Additional studies have also provided fragmented evidence on characteristics of spatial distribution patterns in the built environment that impact the circular flow of materials (e.g., residential and housing density) (Condeixa et al. 2017).
(TAP) – On 16/03/2023, TUNIS/Tunisia. The Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) launched a call for applications to finance projects aimed at promoting employment and entrepreneurship in the green economy sector. The aim is to support the environmental transition of the economies of 7 Mediterranean countries, including Tunisia.
According to information published Thursday by the UfM, this call for applications is intended for NGOs working to support vulnerable populations disproportionately affected by the consequences of climate change and by the evolution of the socio-economic context.
Eligible for this call for applications are non-profit NGOs active in the field of environmental transition of economies in an inclusive manner and with respect for social justice. These NGOs must be based in Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Mauritania, Palestine or Tunisia, with priority given to regional projects. The deadline for applications is May 29, 2023.
The selected candidates will benefit from financial support ranging from 150,000 to 300,000 euros (which represents a sum varying between 500,000 and 1 million dinars) per project, as well as from the UfM’s technical expertise, which will give them greater visibility.
Funded by the UfM with the support of the German Development Cooperation (GIZ), on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), this initiative, in its first edition, launched in 2020, helped 18,000 people, mainly young people and women, from seven UfM member states (Greece, Italy, Jordan, Lebanon, Malta, Morocco and Tunisia).
These projects address employment challenges in the areas of entrepreneurship, women’s empowerment, sustainable tourism, and education and research.
The green economy, as well as “green” jobs, are set to play a key role in the sustainable recovery of the Mediterranean region from the COVID-19 pandemic.
In an Insight view of our current situation, Roland Hunziker, Director of Built Environment & Sarah Dominey, Finance & Built Environment Manager, hold that the finance sector can accelerate the transformation to a net-zero built environment giving us how this is achieved.
The finance sector can accelerate the transformation to a net-zero built environment – Here’s how
Real estate assets are a valuable and growing component of institutional investment portfolios. At the same time, ambitious policies and regulations, changing public awareness and radically shifting demand drivers are pushing finance sector stakeholders to focus on sustainability in their portfolios because it affects business in the short, medium and long term. When put together, the finance sector has a unique opportunity to shape demand and drive transformation in the built environment.
Achieving net-zero emissions in the built environment by 2050 is the last stop along an arduous path. The specific targets all actors need to aim for are for all newly constructed buildings to have net-zero operational emissions by 2030 and for all buildings – including existing ones – to have net-zero emissions by 2050. And embodied carbon emissions – emissions from material production and construction processes – must be at least 40-50% lower by 2030 than today and net zero by 2050. Unfortunately, we are not on track.
Halving emissions by 2030 is, therefore, the first stop and must effectively happen today. This is because the lead times in typically built environment projects can easily be 8 to 10 years, so companies planning and designing projects today must already include these targets for 2030.
Achieving this massive transformation at the speed and scale required means that all actors have to share the same vision of halving emissions by 2030 and reaching net zero across the entire life cycle by 2050. They also must deeply and radically collaborate to realize this vision – across governments, the finance sector, businesses along the full value chain, science and civil society. The collaboration needs to focus on the following three critical levers for market transformation (WBCSD and GlobalABC, 2021):
Adopt whole-life carbon (WLC) and life-cycle thinking and concepts across the value chain and the market to align on key indicators, metrics and targets consistently.
Treat carbon like cost: Internalize the WLC emissions costs and reflect them in the price of products and services throughout the value chain, including in governance mechanisms, procurement and taxonomy, from governments and the financial sector.
Foster a positive and reinforcing supply and demand dynamic that incentivizes low-carbon solutions along the value chain. This requires signals from government and finance and, most importantly, collaboration between industry players along the whole value chain.
The role of the finance sector
Finance sector stakeholders strongly influence built environment impacts through loans and investments in built assets and – indirectly – investing in value chain businesses. When mobilizing financial capital, they can set requirements for low-carbon solutions in building projects and across the value chain. Investors, asset managers, banks, advisors and insurers all influence if and how buildings are constructed. They play a crucial role in the very early stages of buildings when decisions significantly impact their future emissions. This includes the energy performance of buildings and setting requirements to reduce emissions from building materials and the construction process.
To understand how the finance sector can exert this influence, let’s look at what holds us back today.
Challenges and opportunities
The transition’s challenges are many and complex. For instance, there is a lack of true collaboration and understanding between the construction, real estate and finance sectors, despite their deep link and reliance. Poor data availability, quality, and limited transparency are holding up measurement, benchmarking, and target-setting processes for net-zero emissions pathways. The built environment and finance sectors are facing a skills shortage in terms of understanding, writing and using reporting and disclosure documents effectively to determine how the results could drive investments. And financial services organizations have traditionally prioritized short-term financial returns over positive, but more difficult to assess, environmental, social and governance (ESG) returns.
However, in all of these, there are opportunities. Stakeholders can find new ways of working together, and legally binding contracts, for example, can help ensure the right incentives, procurement methods and metrics to support net-zero emissions goals for project delivery (see WBCSD’s Decarbonizing construction – Guidance for investors and developers to reduce embodied carbon).
Training and upskilling on sustainability-related disclosures and strategies to align with the Paris Agreement would ensure investors and built environment professionals see the value in these documents from both sides. They would become part of the central decision-making process for investments, linking non-financial concerns with financial impact. The Urban Land Institute (ULI) Europe’s C Change project, which is currently addressing transition risk in valuation, is an example of progress in this area. Changing the corporate culture will further the idea that the ultimate goal is to ensure strong returns on investment while creating value beyond shareholders, managing the multifaceted risks of transitioning to net-zero emissions and safeguarding people and the environment.
Understanding these and other challenges and opportunities will help the sector adapt strategies and solutions that will be the key to achieving net-zero emissions.
No-regret actions for finance sector stakeholders
Four specific interventions sit at the core of strategies to reduce the full life-cycle emissions of projects in the built environment: Accountability, Ambition, Action and Advocacy.
Finance stakeholders in the built environment can achieve accountability through standardized data measurement and transparent reporting.
In setting credible, science-based net-zero emissions targets, they raise ambition.
They take action by developing climate transition plans and placing whole-life carbon at the center of decarbonization strategies and decisions.
For asset owners and investors, achieving the transition means setting clear portfolio- and asset-specific targets and timelines. They also must embed critical climate and ESG factors into requests for proposals, investment mandates, manager selection and stewardship engagement with portfolio companies and incorporate the related risks (and opportunities) into valuations and, ultimately, into investment decisions.
For asset managers, the lack of consistent, comparable and decision-useful information on climate impact is still a barrier to better implementation. However, growing demand and regulatory pressures motivate every firm to overcome data challenges through proprietary work or third parties. Standardized frameworks and local/regional taxonomies help the asset management industry with enhanced tools for assessment, benchmarking and reporting. WBCSD’s Net-zero buildings – Where do we stand? report lays the basis for a harmonized whole-life carbon assessment and reporting framework.
Finance providers can acquire a better understanding of the emissions from the products they are financing using adequate data, tools and standards, including the cost of carbon and transition risk considerations. The ability to accurately measure and standardize (whole life) carbon emissions could help them link their financial offerings to carbon targets and potentially provide lower costs for low-carbon projects. For that to happen, they need clear and transparent information to reliably assess the business case and build trust with the market.
For insurance providers, it means developing methodologies to assess and quantify different climate change scenarios and integrating both physical and transition risks into decisions to enter or exit an underwriting.
Lastly, investment advisors and data providers can facilitate top-down learning as they share and spread best practices and become significant players in the standardization and harmonization of data and target-setting (including but not limited to the Carbon Risk Real Estate Monitor (CRREM), Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) and GRESB).
What’s next? Achieving a breakthrough in buildings
To reduce built environment emissions globally from 14 Gt per year to 7 Gt per year seems to be a daunting task. However, with a clear focus on whole-life carbon emissions alongside cost, the finance sector can help accelerate this transition. There is evidence that we can reduce construction emissions by half today and cost-effectively. And evidence is also emerging that retrofitting building portfolios to net-zero emissions can be achieved competitively.
What needs to happen next is for all stakeholders – finance, national and local governments, and businesses along the value chain – to come together and co-develop roadmaps for a net-zero built environment that identify a clear vision, actions and accountability. Building on the aforementioned built environment market transformation levers, they can drive a united response and decisive action, thereby overcoming the fragmentation of efforts seen so far. The emerging Buildings Breakthrough with national governments committed to transforming their built environment will provide a platform to join efforts and collaborate to achieve a future in which the built environment turns from a problem into a solution to tackle climate change.
We cannot wait – because for the built environment, 2030 is today.
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