30 May 2023 2:08 am
Greenhouse gas emissions tracking project

Greenhouse gas emissions tracking project

May 27, 2023

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Greenhouse gas emissions tracking project all over the world looks out of context or mishandled, as We are about to break the 1.5°C limit and as rightly put by Isabelle Kempe in her article republished here. 

Greenhouse gas emissions tracking project addresses ‘flawed’ approach cities use now, researchers say

The image above is metamorworks via Getty Images

City Climate Intelligence can provide free, near-real-time information on greenhouse gas emissions at the city, neighborhood, building and street level.

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Published in Smart City Dive. May 26, 2023

Associate Editor

 

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The systems cities use to monitor and analyze greenhouse gas emissions are “flawed,” says a group of researchers from Carbon Monitor, Hestia, IG3IS, Nexqt and RMI.

That’s why the group is developing City Climate Intelligence, which it describes as a “next-generation” methodology that offers cities free, near-real-time greenhouse gas emissions information at three increasingly granular levels: the metropolitan area, neighborhood and building and street level. The methodology draws on satellite data and local information such as public building databases, transmission service operator data and GPS data.

The greenhouse gas inventory is a hallmark of city climate action plans nationwide, allowing leaders to understand how much climate pollution their city emits and which sectors are responsible. While early tools to create that inventory were suitable for raising big-picture awareness — for example, that a city should drive down transportation or building emissions — they aren’t cutting it anymore, Nexqt founder and CEO Fouzi Benkhelifa said. As climate change impacts bear down on communities, and decarbonization deadlines loom, cities need more specific, timely data to make decisions that reduce emissions the most, he said.

Emma Loewen, a senior associate with RMI’s urban transformation team, described City Climate Intelligence’s future as akin to the National Weather Service. “Everyone can access it; it’s free. It’s updated in a timely manner that is useful for people,” she said. “And there’s no real questioning of it. It’s just an independent third party that is respected and taken for face value.”

Cities currently face numerous challenges in measuring and monitoring greenhouse gas emissions. Inventories are time-consuming and resource-intensive, costing up to tens of thousands of dollars, points out an April report by the City Climate Intelligence team. Further, existing data systems on urban greenhouse gas emissions aren’t designed for planning or implementing emissions reduction efforts, the report says.

“During RMI workshops, city governments and community advocates alike identified policy planning capabilities as a key component of an optimal emissions data tool,” the report states. “Currently, these city stakeholders don’t have the capacity to conduct detailed data analyses on the impact of proposed climate solutions.”

The City Climate Intelligence team has provided emissions data at the metropolitan area level for 53 cities globally, including Madison, Wisconsin, and Portland, Oregon. For the covered cities, users can see two years of emissions data at a 10-kilometer resolution broken down into six sectors: ground transportation, power, industry, residential, aviation and international shipping. The team plans to eventually offer this information for every major metropolitan area in the world.

The researchers have also explored the potential to use street- and building-level data to simulate the effects of specific climate policies in Los Angeles and Paris. In Los Angeles, their analysis showed that installing rooftop solar in central LA for households making less than $50,000 annually would result in a 21.6% annual reduction in citywide emissions compared with 2019 levels. The median savings in annual electricity costs for the more than 260,000 households making the switch would be $1,884, the analysis estimates.

This ability to support effective decision-making is part of what sets City Climate Intelligence apart from other tools, the researchers say. “There are a lot of greenhouse gas emissions data platforms out there,” but they aren’t driving climate action on the ground, Loewen said.

Her team isn’t alone in identifying this information gap. An October report by the National Academy of Sciences acknowledges the rapidly increasing needs of cities and states to manage emissions and calls for accelerated development of greenhouse gas emissions information “at more granular temporal and spatial scales.”

It’s not just city leaders that the researchers believe could benefit from City Climate Intelligence. RMI’s report points to potential uses by community-based organizations to raise awareness of emissions-related equity issues, journalists to track progress toward goals and the climate finance community to locate areas for investment.

Next, the City Climate Intelligence team plans to create a policy toolkit using neighborhood-, street- and building-level information to simulate the impact of policies, investments and infrastructure. It will also develop a platform for the data and methodology that has a user-friendly design, is integrated with existing inventory reporting frameworks and can layer socioeconomic data sets with emissions data.

The researchers also plan to expand emissions data to a larger group of cities, prioritizing smaller ones and those in the Global South that might not have the information they need for a baseline greenhouse gas emissions inventory, the report says.

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Creating a Culture of Sustainability in Homebuilding

May 26, 2023

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Yale School of Management published this insight on Creating a Culture of Sustainability in Homebuilding that could be said to be not beyond their acclaimed mission of educating leaders for business & society.  It is as wise as useful in these days of uncertainty.  Here it is.
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Creating a Culture of Sustainability in Homebuilding

Sustainably built homes cost more up front, but that investment can easily pay off over the decades with savings on heating and cooling—not to mention resiliency and improved indoor air quality. Aaron Smith ’16 is helping builders and buyers understand the benefits of building homes that can generate as much energy as they use.

Aaron Smith

CEO, Energy & Environmental Building Alliance (EEBA); CEO, GreenSmith Builders
Interview conducted and edited by Ted O’Callahan
We’re trying to transform an industry that has been doing things pretty much the same way for more than 100 years. We want to make healthier, electric, resilient, decarbonized, and net-zero homes the norm.

Q: What is the Energy and Environmental Building Alliance?

The Energy and Environmental Building Alliance (EEBA) is a community of 72,000 builders, architects, and other stakeholders across North America coming together to learn, share, and collaborate on how to build homes in a more sustainable manner.

Ultimately, we’re trying to transform an industry that has been doing things pretty much the same way for more than 100 years. We want to make healthier, electric, resilient, decarbonized, and net-zero homes the norm.

Q: Why is that important?

Forty percent of our energy use comes from buildings. That’s a significant contributor to climate change. Overall, the construction industry is very slow to adopt advances; even for great products and effective new approaches, it can take 20 years. But the technology’s there to do better, so if you want to innovate and disrupt, housing is a really interesting space right now.

The move to sustainable methods is a patchwork, but it’s ready to spread. We’re seeing the start of hockey stick growth. EEBA tracks single family homes and multi-family units built at or above a Zero Energy Ready standard across North America. Over the past two years there was a 440% increase.

Q: What do you mean by Zero Energy Ready and above?

The Zero Energy Ready Home is a standard set by the Department of Energy. To qualify a building must be energy efficient enough that a renewable energy system could offset the home’s annual energy use, so it’s extremely well insulated and extremely airtight, and may have an energy recovery ventilator. Above that is net zero, where a solar, wind, or renewable other system is producing all the energy the house needs. And the step beyond that is net positive, which is a building that actually exports energy into the grid.

There are a lot of standards and certification programs out there—LEED, National Green Building Standard, Passive House, Healthy Building, the Living Building Challenge. We tend to educate builders about all of them and allow them to choose the one that’s best for them and their clients.

Something that doesn’t have a certification program but we’re always focused on is building resiliency. How does it protect the occupants and continue to operate during a stressful period? With extreme weather events and potentially extended power outages that’s increasingly important.

The efficacy of solar panels has gone up so much that even a small amount of solar allows an efficient house to be net zero. Pairing that with new inverter technology, which lets your house feed excess solar power into the grid most of the time but switch to running the house directly off solar when the there’s a grid outage, adds resilience.

We’re seeing more and more battery deployment for backup within homes. Those can be dedicated systems or with something like the F-150 Lightning, Ford’s electric pickup, your EV can serve as backup power for the home during an outage.

Q: Is the interest in more sustainable building coming from builders, consumers, or somewhere else?

There are many drivers. In a few places, building codes are requiring new construction to be all electric. For those places, understanding how to build this way is really a license to operate. But for the most part, our members are professionals who want to be the best in their field. They have a sustainability mindset and a calling to build high-performance homes.

I learned about craftsmanship from my grandfather. He was proud of building homes that would last for 100 years. To me, sustainability is an extension of craftsmanship. It just makes sense. I hope my generation decides the building it’s putting up for the next 100 years will be sustainable. Building in the most sustainable way goes to a larger mission of being stewards of this planet for our kids and grandkids. I get excited by that.

And as millennials start to become the generation driving housing, their predisposition toward more sustainable and healthier is pushing awareness of building more sustainably into the industry.

When people consider buying a house, they look at the listing price. It’s not easy to look at the operating costs or the health costs, which can be dramatically different from one house to another.

In some cases, sustainability isn’t at the forefront. A builder in Texas who does net zero homes told me 15% of his customers do it for environmental reasons. Another 25% want the self-sufficiency of being able to go off the grid with their own water supply, solar power, and backup batteries. The remaining 60% do it for economic reasons. Between the rebates and incentives that are available and the certainty of owning their power supply so there won’t be escalating costs, they are ready to make the investment.

Q: Is it more expensive to build in a sustainable way?

It typically does cost from 1% to 11% more to build a very sustainable home. But it’s a lot like electric vehicles. The upfront cost is higher, but it you look at the total cost over time, it more than pays off the investment.

The problem is, when people consider buying a house, they look at the listing price. They don’t think to—and it’s not easy to—look at the operating costs or the health costs, which can be dramatically different from one house to another.

I didn’t ask about heating costs when I rented a wonderful 1740s farmhouse in Connecticut while I attended Yale SOM. It cost $1,000 a month to heat during the winter. Operating costs make a real difference.

In addition to running EEBA, I also co-founded GreenSmith Builders with Marc Wigder a classmate from Yale SOM. We build what we call attainable sustainable housing—energy-efficient single- and multi-family homes. I just got the monthly heating bill for a 27,000 square foot apartment building. It was $720 for the whole building in Minnesota in the winter.

Sustainable building makes housing more affordable when you look at total cost of ownership. When you think about living in a house for years, even decades, would you spend 1%, 5%, 11% more up front if you know you’ll get it back with savings on lower operating costs? Sustainable builders are starting to energy model each home so they can quantify the value long term.

And that’s only considering the energy costs. Health costs are harder to quantify, but in many homes, indoor air quality is worse than outdoor air quality. There are a lot of great systems that ensure a really healthful environment in the home.

Q: Why isn’t this approach the norm?

Market sector change is very difficult. It takes bringing stakeholders together. It takes sharing of ideas and best practices. It takes radical collaboration across organizations. We get up every day at EEBA and try to transform the industry. It’s extremely challenging and frustrating and exciting and rewarding, all at the same time.

Change is hard in any industry. For residential construction, there are a lot of incumbency issues. There’s huge demand for housing. You can sell every house that you build. Why would you change anything? That’s especially true in places where building codes haven’t been updated in years. It’s common to think that a house built to code means it’s all good. Another way to look at a house built to code is that it’s the worst house that’s not illegal. Depending on where you are, simply building to code isn’t desirable.

Switching costs are real, especially in an industry where it’s common to learn through apprenticeship on a job site—“This is how we do it.” At EEBA we try to make that mentoring culture a strength. Because builders work locally, for the most part they’re not in the same market as other EEBA members; they’re not competing against each other, so they can share and learn from each other and continually raise the level of knowledge of what it means to be a sustainable home builder. That’s a powerful part of EEBA.

What we’re trying to do is really speed the adoption of great technology, great building practices, and sustainable thinking across the industry. We’re making continuous learning easier. We provide online and in-person education. We do a yearly summit where we bring builders together.

Given the trends, if builders don’t have a plan to be building Zero Energy Ready houses, they may not be able to operate in the marketplace within a few years. I think it’s going to shift that quickly.

Q: Are there enough people going into the building trades to supply the required labor?

There are not enough people going into the trades. That’s starting to force change in interesting ways. Because builders can’t hire all the labor they’d like, offsite construction techniques are getting attention.

There are a variety of different approaches, but essentially components of the house are built in a factory. Then the floor cassettes or structured insulated panels that make up the walls are trucked to the building site and craned into place. It’s incredible how fast the modules go together.

There are a lot of investments in offsite construction. Builders are looking at it. Lumber yards and other suppliers are interested. We’re seeing a huge shift right now. It really helps with the labor issues. And it can be done to the highest sustainability standards.

Q: What led you to Yale SOM?

When I was an undergraduate there weren’t courses in sustainability, let alone a major. I learned about sustainability on the job as best I could. I went to Yale SOM to strengthen my understanding of sustainability and to learn how to have impact at scale.

When I came across EEBA, an incredible mission-driven organization that’s really changing the face of construction across North America, it just brought together everything that I had learned across my career. Now the goal is to grow the organization significantly and grow our impact significantly so we can speed up that change in the marketplace.

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Read original text on Yale Insights.

Are UN Sustainable Development Goal ETFs fit for purpose?

Apr 20, 2023

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ETF Stream‘s question: Are UN Sustainable Development Goal ETFs fit for purpose? It seems incongruous, but only the reply can justify such interrogation.   

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Are UN Sustainable Development Goal ETFs fit for purpose?

 

The goals look ready-made for thematic funds, but can they be properly aligned to an investment framework?

By Theo Andrew

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) continue to capture the imagination of ETF issuers but questions have been raised about the ability to properly align them to an investment framework.

Used by both active and passive funds, they were thrust into the spotlight again in January after DWS launched a seven-strong range of thematic ETFs targeting the SDGs it believes “present a growth story”.

Other ETF issuers have also launched products tracking SDGs, albeit not so inextricably linked to the goals, including the L&G Clean Water UCITS ETF (GLUG), the iShares Global Water UCITS ETF (IH20) and the BNP Paribas Easy ECPI Circular Economy Leaders UCITS ETF (REUSE).

The goals comprise 17 interlinked objectives, including no poverty, zero hunger and clean water and sanitation, which aim to serve as a blueprint to advance global progress for “peace and prosperity” for the planet.

However, while offering a strong narrative to pitch to investors, many have questioned the validity of using the SDGs as an investment framework.

Kenneth Lamont, senior fund analyst at Morningstar, said he understood some of the concerns around using SDGs as an investment framework but added it was part of a broader problem around impact investing with ETFs.

“The question mark hanging over SDGs is part of the broader question of whether you can use ETFs to invest impactfully. Investors need to be able to measure that impact, that is the goal of the investment,” he said.

“Generally, it is questionable whether investors can ever have a real impact by investing in listed stocks.”

Stuart Forbes, co-founder at Rize ETF, agreed, adding the SDGs were not designed for public or private market investment.

“The way the goals are measured is through a series of indicators such as decreasing deforestation and habitat loss. It would be almost impossible to assess a company’s contribution to forestation in Brazil or Indonesia,” he said.

“The further you go with SDGs from an investment and thematic perspective, it is just not possible to align.”

Forbes said Rize ETF explored the idea of launching products linked to the goals, looking at SDG alignment tools, but that they “just do not make any sense”.

“Looking at what the funds are holding, they are almost all developed market economies, they are not servicing an underserved region of the world or having a significant social impact,” he added.

For example, DWS uses MSCI’s SDG alignment tools designed to provide a “holistic view” of companies’ net contribution towards addressing each of the SDGs.

However, Lamont added the thematic element of the SDGs is what makes them attractive. For example, he noted GLUG’s thematic approach, investing in companies’ infrastructure and technology.

“I find GLUG interesting because it does focus a lot on water technology. It is a completely different set of stocks that are actually trying to solve the problem. It is much more of a thematic approach than the traditional water sector fund.”

DWS also includes a thematic element to its SDG range, with sustainable revenue accounting for 75% of the MSCI indices it tracks, while the remaining 25% will be calculated using forward-looking thematic metrics.

Speaking to ETF Stream ahead of the launch in January, Olivier Souliac, senior Xtrackers product specialist at DWS, said it chose not to do all 17 SDGs due to the inability to align them all within an investment framework.

“The reason we have a revenue-based approach is that some of the SDGs such as zero hunger and education can only really be filled by society and governments and are not themes in the sense of being growth stories,” he said.

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The breakthrough for Sustainable Development Goals in Africa

Apr 7, 2023

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An AllAfrica post about a United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (Addis Ababa) Press Release could not choose a better time for its posting.  In effect, the breakthrough for Sustainable Development Goals in Africa is as vital now as it has ever been. seem not to suffice for this universal mission.

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UN: New green industrial age can be the breakthrough for Sustainable Development Goals

NEW YORK, 5 April 2023  – Amid growing food and energy crises, an uncertain global economic outlook, and the escalating impacts of climate change, the UN today said that a sustainable industrial transformation is needed to close the widening development gap between countries, meet climate targets and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

The  2023 Financing for Sustainable Development Report: Financing Sustainable Transformations  says urgent, massive investments are needed to accelerate transformations including in electricity supply, industry, farming, transportation, and buildings.

“Without the means to invest in sustainable development and transform their energy and food systems, developing countries are falling even further behind,” United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said in the foreword to the report. “A two-track world of haves and have-nots holds clear and obvious dangers for every country. We urgently need to rebuild global cooperation and find the solutions to our current crises in multilateral action.”

According to the report some of the necessary changes are already taking place. The energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine has spurred investment in global energy transition, which skyrocketed in 2022 to a record $1.1 trillion. Energy transition investments surpassed fossil fuel system investments for the first time in 2022, but these are almost all in China and developed countries.

The  2023 Financing for Sustainable Development Report  finds that most developing countries do not have the resources for investment, unlike their developed counterparts. Climate change, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the COVID-19 pandemic, and debt payments up to two times higher than in 2019 have combined to put massive fiscal pressures on most developing countries. This limits their ability to invest in sustainable transformation.

In developed countries in 2020 and 2021, for example, post-pandemic recovery spending was $12,200 per capita. This was 30 times higher than for developing countries ($410), and 610 times higher than for least developed countries ($20).

“Without delivering a reformed international financial system while scaling up investments in the SDGs, we will not deliver on our shared commitment to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,” said United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed. “The good news is that we know what to do and how to do it. From launching critical transformations in energy, food and education to ushering in a new green industrial and digital age—we all must quicken the pace and leave no one behind.”

The 2023 Financing for Sustainable Development Report notes that industrialization has historically been a vehicle of progress, leading to economic growth, job creation, technological advancement, and poverty reduction. The report calls for a new generation of sustainable industrial policies, underpinned by integrated national planning, to scale up investments and lay the foundation for the needed transformations. Many opportunities for inclusive growth exist in agroindustry, green energy, and manufacturing.

The recent rapid uptake in technology points to the possibilities for an equally rapid transition to sustainable industrialization and growth. Between 2021 and 2022, 338 million more people used the Internet regularly, an increase of approximately 38,600 additional people every hour. Furthermore, in regions with high-quality connected services, 44 per cent of all the companies are exporters, in contrast to only 19 per cent of firms where Internet services are weaker.

However, manufacturing capacity remains uneven. In least developed countries in Africa, manufacturing value added, instead of doubling as per the SDG target 9.2, fell from around 10 per cent of GDP in 2000 to 9 per cent in 2021. It will take targeted policies to build the domestic productive capabilities to achieve low-carbon transitions, create decent jobs, and boost economic growth, while ensuring gender equality.

To deliver the necessary resources for this transformation, the 2023 Financing for Sustainable Development Report calls for a combination of strengthening tax systems, enabling and catalyzing private investment, and scaling up of international public investment and development cooperation. Changes to the international financial architecture are also needed to raise sufficient resources.

The report notes that the international system is currently undergoing the biggest rethink across international finance, monetary, trade, and tax systems since the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944. As international institutions work to adapt to the rapidly evolving needs of countries, the report warns that if reforms are piecemeal, incomplete, or fail to take the SDGs into account, sustainable development will be unachievable.

A reformed, effective international financial architecture to deliver for sustainable transformation must include revised frameworks for:

  • International tax norms, including rules for taxing digitalized and globalized business that meet the needs of developing countries;
  • Policy and regulatory frameworks to better link private sector profitability with sustainability;
  • Evolving the scale and mission of the development bank system;
  • A loss and damage fund on climate change, which needs to be operationalized quickly;
  • Debt relief and major improvement to the international debt resolution architecture – given that 60 per cent of low-income countries are in or at risk of debt distress;
  • Multilateral trade rules to revise the approach to and resolve current tensions on green subsidies.

“We have the solutions to avoid a lasting sustainable development divide, and prevent a lost decade for development,” said UN Under Secretary-General Li Junhua, head of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, which led the production of the inter-agency report. “We must find the political will to overcome the rising political tensions, splintering of inter-country alliances, and worrying trends towards nationalism and seize the moment now to urgently invest in our common future.”

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Standards are key to achieve the SDGs

Oct 14, 2022

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Standards are technical specifications or other precise criteria used consistently as a rule, guideline, or definition. These Standards as minimal requirements are key to achieving the SDGs.  Here is why.

 

On World Standards Day, Standards are key to achieve the SDGs

 

Energy, food insecurity, economic uncertainty: our world is tangled in many interlocking crises. The magnitude of these challenges calls on us – institutions, businesses and individuals – to identify solutions to build back better together.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by the United Nations in 2015, offers a way forward. At its heart are the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): they represent a call for action to address social imbalances, develop a sustainable economy, and fight climate change. Each goal of the SDGs – and their corresponding targets – supports a specific dimension of the effort needed and point to a global commitment that is now more relevant than ever.

CEN and CENELEC, as two of the official European Standardization Organizations (ESOs), are aware of the importance to leverage all available tools to achieve the SDGs. We believe that, in this effort, standards can play a key role.

In this spirit, this 14 October, like every year, CEN and CENELEC join the international standardization community in celebrating World Standards Day. This year’s edition, under the motto “Shared visions for a better world”, showcases the many ways in which international standards can contribute to sustainability.

As the recovery from the Covid pandemic shows, voluntary, consensus-based standards facilitate the translation of ambitions into concrete actions: they offer shared and clear rules of behaviour which foster the dissemination of best practices and the circulation of innovations.

As CEN and CENELEC, our commitment to making standardization a lever for sustainable development is twofold. First, in our role as ESOs, our purpose is to strengthen the Single Market. Thanks to the well-functioning public-private partnership recently renewed through the new European Standardization Strategy, CEN and CENELEC support the EU’s initiatives – including the ones linked to the SDGs: the EU Green Deal, the Circular Economy Action Plan, and the EU’s Digital Strategy,  to name only a few.

On the other hand, we understand that, as Europeans, we are part of a bigger global ecosystem. Therefore, our engagement is – primarily – global.  With our strong commitment towards our international partners (ISO and IEC), together with our national members we aim to ensure that Europe leads in the development and application of standardization solutions that respond to global challenges.

Our commitment to sustainable development is reflected in the key place it holds in our CEN and CENELEC Strategy 2030, where as part of its priorities we pledge for “International standardization to be a lever for sustainable development”.  This strategic document will guide our work until 2030. The objective is to ensure we are fit for the future and contribute to building a more sustainable and resilient Europe.

These are not just lofty ambitions. Through the work done by many experts across different Technical Committees (TCs), CEN and CENELEC develop European Standards that contribute to the three pillars of economic, environmental and societal sustainability. Some examples:

  • SDG 5 Gender equality. CEN and CENELEC signed in 2019 the UNECE declaration on Gender Responsive Standards, pledging to adopt a gender-aware approach to standardization, and established an ambitious implementation plan that is reviewed on an annual basis.
  • SDG 6 Clean Water and Sanitation. Two Technical Committees focus on ensuring a safe and steady water supply, TC 230 ‘Water Analysis’ and TC 164 ‘Water Supply’. In particular, CEN/TC 164 developed the EN 15975 series, that ensure the security of water supplies.
  • SDG 7 Affordable and Clean Energy. Many existing standards on energy management can be used as tools to help businesses gradually improve their performance and the energy efficiency of their products. For instance, in the field of Ecodesign and Energy Labelling, 25 CEN and CENELEC TCs produce European Standards on methods for measuring the energy performance of various energy-related products against the values set by the European legislation.
  • Another relevant area for the energy transition is transports. Standards help reduce the amount of energy used in the sector and shift to sustainable fuels. Existing standards cover means of transport (such as railways, with a total of more than 1200 standards on everything from rolling stock to electric circuits in train), tools to monitor emissions in vehicles, or Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) in urban areas. Such standards are often used by manufacturers, public authorities and regulatory bodies to implement their ambitious sustainability plans.
  • SDG 12 Responsible consumption and production. The textile industry is an example of a particularly resource intensive sector. In response, various solutions for circular textile products are emerging, and textiles are a main topic in the EU Circular Economy Action Plan. CEN, through its TC 248 WG 39 ‘Circular Economy for textile products and the textile chain’, is working to develop common rules to avoid green washing and create a level playing field for all producers.
  • SDG 13 Climate action. CEN and CENELEC have adopted a horizontal approach to environmental protection, embedding it across all their actions. Some examples of this approach: the recently inaugurated CEN TC 467 ‘Climate Change’ develops standards to mitigate and adapt to climate change, while CENELEC’s 111x ‘Environment’ focuses on reducing the negative impact of electrical and electronic products on the natural environment.

The ones above are just some examples. Many more exist in other sectors, and their potential to support sustainability plans all across the board is huge.

To provide some evidence on this potential, last May CEN and CENELEC presented a new dedicated webpage: “Standards for the SDGs”. This online tool provides a comprehensive and clear mapping of the standards that contribute significantly to the SDGs in the European context.

At the moment, the website accounts for 4783 deliverables, with more expected to be added in the coming months. The objective of the project is to develop a strategic approach to SDGs leading to the inclusion of sustainability considerations in standardization.

The global challenges we all face are complex and require collective effort. SDGs show the way forward. On World Standards’ Day 2022, and together with many other organizations around Europe and the world, CEN and CENELEC are happy to renew their commitment to leveraging the power of European standards in building a sustainable future for everyone.

 

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