Energy and Water Consumption Archives

Accelerating low-carbon building design & development

Jun 15, 2023

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Accelerating low-carbon building design & development is the leitmotiv of American design practice as envisaged by SOM. This article on and by Sustainability elaborates on how this is attained.

The image above is for illustration and is featured in SOM Proposing A Design For A Building That Absorbs Carbon Throughout Its Life Cycle.

SOM: Accelerating low-carbon building design & development

By Lucy Buchholz

June 14, 2023

Billie Jean King Main Library, completed in California in 2019, Credit: Benny Chan

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) launches the Whole Life Carbon Accounting service to help accelerate low-carbon building design & development

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), a worldwide alliance of architects, designers, engineers and planners, has introduced a new service aimed at accelerating the implementation of low-carbon and net-zero buildings.

The initiative, named Whole Life Carbon Accounting, is a system used to assess and measure the operational and embodied carbon emissions of a building throughout its entire lifespan.

When the system is incorporated during the design phase, it offers a precise picture of the proposed building’s carbon footprint, enabling investors, property owners and developers to make well-informed decisions. By evaluating a building’s performance after completion, the service enables owners to monitor progress and achieve their long-term sustainability goals.

“The greatest opportunity to work towards a more sustainable future is to invest in new climate action measures,” said Kent Jackson, SOM Design Partner. “We are proud to extend our long and proven history of working with public bodies, property owners and developers to help lead the way for a low-carbon built environment. We look forward to bringing our skills and expertise to bear on the critical issue of a reduced carbon future.”

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The shift towards whole-life carbon

Accounting for approximately 40% of carbon emissions worldwide, the built environment has long prioritised the reduction of operational energy and its carbon emissions. However, there has been a significant shift in focus towards whole-life carbon, changing the way buildings are designed, constructed and renovated.

Embodied carbon – the carbon impact associated with a building’s initial construction – cannot be rectified later, whereas operational energy and associated carbon emissions can be improved to a certain extent once a building is in use.

“The built environment urgently needs new approaches to performing carbon assessments. Innovation is driven by a diversity of ideas and voices,” says Mina Hasman, SOM Sustainability Director. “Evidence shows that as a project develops and design strategies evolve, the gaps between traditional assessments and a building’s true performance can lead to a performance gap of up to five times more energy use and/or carbon emissions between predicted and actual values.

“Our service puts an end to this. As regulators and investors evaluate new and existing assets more closely, we provide clients with practical strategies to help inform their investment, development and management activities.”

Applying SOM’s interdisciplinary approach, the firm’s sustainability team analyse and measure operational and embodied carbon emissions across every stage of a project. Clients can therefore gain an understanding of a building’s true carbon impact and the ability to translate carbon targets into measurable performance outcomes.

Carbon assessments are typically performed at the end of design stages by different parties and to different standards. This can result in isolated calculations which are not comparable and cannot effectively illustrate a building’s accurate performance.

The gaps between the projected performance of a design and actual building performance widen as projects develop and designs evolve. Consequently, calculations can constitute as little as 20% of actual carbon emissions. This can affect a building’s value and viability in the long term.

SOM Whole Life Carbon Accounting

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The LEED Platinum Billie Jean King Main Library

The holistic approach has led to internationally-acclaimed projects, including the LEED Platinum Billie Jean King Main Library, completed in California in 2019.

The building is one of few in the region that features a lightweight timber structural system, to build the library atop an existing underground concrete parking garage. It was also named 2021 Project of the Year by the US Green Building Council and was the winner of the Metropolis Magazine Planet Positive award.

Additionally, SOM achieved a remarkable 61% reduction in embodied carbon compared to a typical concrete building, by preserving most of the original concrete structure.

SOM’s Whole Life Carbon Accounting has resulted in the internationally acclaimed Billie Jean King Main Library, Credit, Benny Chan

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About SOM

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) is a global practice of architects, designers, engineers, and planners, responsible for some of the world’s most technically and environmentally advanced buildings and significant public spaces.

From a strategic regional plan to a single piece of furniture, SOM’s designs anticipate change in how we live, work and communicate, and have brought lasting value to communities worldwide.

The firm’s approach is highly collaborative, and its interdisciplinary team is engaged in a wide range of international projects, with creative studios based across the globe. SOM is a net zero emissions business.

Building nature positive into the energy transition

Jun 2, 2023

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Published by wbcsd on 2 June 2023 and written by: Pete Jones, Manager, Nature, Diana Ferrari, Manager, Energy & Mariana Heinrich, Director, Energy, this following insightful view of our world of today appears to be a soft-spoken description of the diverse but global and uniform maltreatment of our mother nature.

Nature is the backbone of the world economy. Industries from agriculture to energy impact and depend on the natural world to thrive. Global populations and economies continue to grow, as do their demands on nature and natural resources. Future resilience and prosperity demand that these needs are managed sustainably.

Wildlife populations have decreased by 70% in the last 50 years,¹ which puts multiple ecosystems at risk of collapse. The energy sector accounts for 10% of the pressures causing biodiversity loss,² with oil & gas and utilities having a particularly high impact, largely due to pollution, greenhouse gas emissions and impacts on species and their habitats. Even renewable electricity technologies can have unintended effects on nature. For example, the total amount of land and sea area required to generate the world’s renewable energy requirements is circa 1 million km², equivalent to almost twice the size of France.² Any development close to this figure will result in the loss of natural habitats and undermine nature’s resilience to climate change effects. Therefore, we need a holistic framework as part of the global energy transition to address these impacts and, simultaneously, realize opportunities for nature restoration.

The good news is that in December 2022, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework was adopted, providing the ambitious global aim of halting and reversing biodiversity loss by 2030. While delivering the targets set out in the Global Biodiversity Framework will be a shared task between governments, businesses, financial institutions and civil society, we need more investment, particularly from the private sector, to scale up efforts. This insights piece describes what businesses can do now to take action as required by the Global Biodiversity Framework.

At WBCSD, we are helping companies navigate and manage their nature-positive journeys by providing guidance for consistent and credible business actions, including for specific value chains. Our Roadmaps to Nature Positive are mapping the key nature impacts and dependencies and are identifying priority actions across three high-impact global value chains: land-based (Food & Agriculture and Forest), built environment, as well as energy. This is aligned with broader efforts to map sector transitions to nature-positive in collaboration with Business for Nature and the World Economic Forum.

Our team will lead a workshop at the Reuters Global Energy Transitionin New York on 7 and 8 June. Learn more about what we will cover at the bottom of this blog!

Nature Positive Roadmap for the Energy System

The Nature Positive Roadmap for the Energy System will provide tools and guidance for companies to implement nature-positive transition plans using the globally agreed high-level actions for nature: ACT-D, i.e., Assess, Commit, Transform and Disclose. In addition, it will support companies in setting science-based targets for nature (in line with the Science Based Target Network (SBTN)) and applying the Taskforce for Nature-Related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) framework to nature disclosures.

Emerging insights so far include that:

The energy system will play a key role in contributing to the Global Goal for Nature: it has broad and significant impacts on nature, including water use, air pollution and emissions, land intake, habitat fragmentation and disturbances during construction and operation. But it also has massive potential to drive nature-positive change within its value chain and beyond as an essential component of the supply chains of almost all public and private entities, as well as final customers.
It is key to consider trade-offs between impacts on nature, climate and people: especially in the energy system, climate impacts have been at the forefront of company actions so far, but the increasing momentum around nature offers an opportunity to rebalance and consider the overall implications for all three topics.
We need deep collaboration along the entire value chain to be able to implement impactful transformative actions at a global scale. To enable this collaboration, transparency is required on KPIs, baselines, disclosure and targets so that these can be embedded into each step of the value chain. New metrics are needed for that, and developing and testing these new metrics will take time, as will building partnerships within the value chain that catalyze nature-positive innovation.

TNFD pilot project with WBCSD members

Alongside the roadmap development, six WBCSD member companies have been involved in our TNFD energy system pilot, testing its draft version and providing feedback to the TNFD as well as on the Nature Positive Roadmap.

Key findings to date:

The piloting companies already have policies and processes in place to manage and monitor impacts, risks and opportunities associated with nature. Most of them focus on addressing their own impacts, e.g., through converting habitat, using water or via emissions. Some pilot companies are already applying concepts such as “net-positive impact” or “net gain” to individual projects, particularly for biodiversity.
To capture the wider nature-positive agenda beyond biodiversity, pilot companies are now undertaking gap analyses between their existing commitments, practices and management tools and what working toward nature-positive requires. Such analysis is necessary to integrate nature-positive aligned approaches more explicitly into strategic business planning and management processes, as well as identify any capacity/skills needed to implement them.
New for many companies is the need for a deeper focus on nature impacts and dependencies arising in upstream activities and, for some companies, in their products sold downstream. One possible approach explored during the pilot is to do an initial, qualitative assessment to prioritize those business units for a more detailed assessment.

What’s next?

The overall work on the Roadmap for the Energy System will continue through 2023 and most of 2024, releasing outputs for companies to use along the way – the first ones in Q3 2023. WBCSD is also setting up an SBTN Preparer Group and scoping a TNFD Preparer Forum. These will help companies to get ready to set science-based targets for nature and TNFD-aligned disclosures.

Join us at the Reuters Global Energy Transition Conference for a deep dive into energy and biodiversity

Our team will be leading a workshop at the Reuters Global Energy Transition 2023. As one of Reuters’ flagship events, the conference will gather 750+ executives in New York on 7-8 June to shape and deliver the energy systems of the future. At our workshop, the attendees and us will share advice on how to accelerate nature-positive action via three focused break-out groups:

How to apply the 2022 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) to your business – what targets and metrics are needed?
How to implement the TNFD to help your business – how to integrate biodiversity into enterprise strategy and risk management processes?
How to take Nature Positive action on the ground – what actions are other companies already taking to reverse impacts and restore biodiversity?

The purpose of the workshop will be to provide attendees with ideas and examples of approaches already used, or proposed, to address the questions above. Attendees will leave the workshop better equipped to drive nature action within their businesses.

Mariana Heinrich (WBCSD Director, Energy Pathway), Pete Jones (WBCSD Manager, Nature and secondee from ERM) and Margaret O’Gorman (President, Wildlife Habitat Council) will run the workshop. We hope to see you there! Register here to attend.

For more information on how to get involved in our energy and nature work, please contact: pete.jones@wbcsd.org or heinrich@wbcsd.org.

[1] WWF Living Planet Report 2022 https://wwflpr.awsassets.panda.org/downloads/lpr_2022_full_report.pdf

[2] Impacts of Green New Deal Energy Plans on Grid Stability, Costs, Jobs, Health, and Climate in 143 Countries – ScienceDirect

Tags: Energy, Nature Action, Pathways, Imperatives

Digitisation could turn electricity into a worldwide network

May 19, 2023

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Digitisation could turn electricity into a worldwide network – tech expert

The image above is about the Electricity distribution system, cables to the system, red electric wires, industrial environment

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May 19, 2023

Electricity power has the ability to become a worldwide network with the necessary digitisation and digital interventions.

Referencing the Rubik’s cube, Edwin Diender, Chief Innovation Officer: Global Electric Power Digitalisation Business Unit, Huawei Technologies, Thailand, said each cube represents something or someone.

He was speaking on the second day of Enlit Africa 2023, focusing on the theme, Find the Right Technologies to Power the Global Energy Transition.

A cube that contains all the requisite components has the potential to link up the worldwide web of energy, he said.

“It is energy powering the construction of intelligent cities.

“The digital journey is passing phases. It’s a journey that follows programmes and initiatives and brought together as pieces through universal infrastructure.”

Diender said the conversion of analogue to digital is the first step to digitisation. In the energy sector, for example, analogue meters are replaced by smart meters, an item that is digitised and may be “the first step on this journey.”

The next step involves different building blocks that are brought together in a smart system that’s intelligent. This cube connects to many other cubes by a digital framework.

Diender said Huawei is looking at other forms of infrastructure, including electric power digitisation.

This would encompass finding the right technologies to help drive the digital journey for the energy industry.

Harnessing electricity transmission through digitisation

The company wants to “grab opportunities” like a software defined grid, intelligent power plant and green intelligent energy solutions. It wants to bridge industry requirements with digital technologies and finding the right technologies for industrial scenarios.

“The digital journey is a collaborative journey. We are working closely with customers worldwide in the electric power industry.”

He also cited technology solutions that can be used to protect power infrastructure – like an intelligent substation inspection system. Diender said the award-winning Yancheng Industrial Park was an example of Huawei looking at digital energy solutions.

The Yancheng Park project was jointly developed by the company and the Yancheng Power Supply Company, a subsidiary of the State Grid Corporation of China.

“The project uses the triple-dimensional model for energy transformation, decarbonisation, and digital transformation.

“By focusing on the three scenarios of smart energy management, carbon management, and campus management, this project delivers real-time monitoring of energy equipment, strong carbon emission management, intelligent and convenient access control management, and intelligent and coordinated micro-grid control.

“The campus is powered by complementary energy sources and integrates its energy consumption system with on-campus terminals.

“The project is a showcase of an intelligent and low-carbon campus that contributes to a green, low-carbon, safe, and efficient modern energy system.”

Bracing for climate change-fuelled summer of drought

May 17, 2023

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A typical image above of what Bracing for climate change-fuelled summer of drought is about.

It is about Pistachio trees in a field affected by the prolonged drought in Ronda, southern Spain May 11, 2023. REUTERS/Jon Nazca/File Photo

Southern Europe braces for climate change-fuelled summer of drought

view shows the ground of the Rialb reservoir as drinking water supplies have plunged to their lowest level since 1990 due to extreme drought, in the village of Bassella, Spain May 6, 2023. REUTERS/Nacho Doce/File Photo

Summary

22% of Europe under drought warning
Spain worst-hit, already in severe drought
Some farmers expect worst harvest for decades
Climate change fuelling drought conditions

BRUSSELS, May 17 (Reuters) – Southern Europe is bracing for a summer of ferocious drought, with some regions already suffering water shortages and farmers expecting their worst yields in decades.

As climate change makes the region hotter and drier, years of consecutive drought have depleted groundwater reserves. Soils have become bone dry in Spain, southern France and Italy. Low river and reservoir levels are threatening this summer’s hydropower production.

With temperatures climbing into summertime, scientists warn Europe is on track for another brutal summer, after suffering its hottest on record last year – which fuelled a drought European Union researchers said was the worst in at least 500 years.

So far this year, the situation is most severe in Spain.

“The situation of drought is going to worsen this summer,” said Jorge Olcina, professor of geographic analysis at the University of Alicante, Spain.

There’s little chance at this point of rainfall resolving the underlying drought, either. “At this time of the year, the only thing we can have are punctual and local storms, which are not going to solve the rainfall deficit,” Olcina said.

Seeking emergency EU assistance, Spain’s Agriculture Minister Luis Planas warned that “the situation resulting from this drought is of such magnitude that its consequences cannot be tackled with national funds alone,” according to an April 24 letter sent to the European Commission (EC) and seen by Reuters.

A vegetable patch is affected by the prolonged drought, in Ronda, southern Spain May 11, 2023. REUTERS/Jon Nazca/File Photo

CLIMATE CHANGE TREND

Southern Europe is not alone in suffering severe water shortages this year. The Horn of Africa is enduring its worst drought in decades, while a historic drought in Argentina has hammered soy and corn crops.

More frequent and severe drought in the Mediterranean region – where the average temperature is now 1.5C higher than 150 years ago – is in line with how scientists have forecast climate change will impact the region.

“In terms of the climate change signal, it very much fits with what we’re expecting,” said Hayley Fowler, Professor of Climate Change Impacts at Newcastle University.

Despite these long-held forecasts, preparation is lagging. Many farming regions have yet to adopt water-saving methods like precision irrigation or switch to more drought-hardy crops, such as sunflowers.

“Governments are late. Companies are late,” said Robert Vautard, a climate scientist and director of France’s Pierre-Simon Laplace Institute. “Some companies are not even thinking of changing the model of their consumption, they are just trying to find some miraculous technologies that would bring water.”

France is emerging from its driest winter since 1959, with drought “crisis” alerts already activated in four departmental prefects, restricting non-priority water withdrawals – including for agriculture, according to government website Propluvia.

Portugal, too, is experiencing an early arrival of drought. Some 90% of the mainland is suffering from drought, with severe drought affecting one-fifth of the country – nearly five times the area reported a year earlier.

In Spain, which saw less than half its average rainfall through April this year, thousands of people are relying on truck deliveries for drinking water, while regions including Catalonia have imposed water restrictions.

Some farmers have already reported crop losses as high as 80%, with cereals and oilseeds among those affected, farming groups have said.

“This is the worst loss of harvest for decades,” Pekka Pesonen, who heads the European farming group Copa-Cogeca, said of Spain. “It’s worse than last year’s situation.”

Spain is responsible for half of the EU’s production of olives and one third of its fruit, according to the Commission.

With its reservoirs at on average 50% of capacity, the country last week earmarked more than 2 billion euros ($2.20 billion) in emergency response funding. It is still awaiting a reply from the Commission on its request for a 450-million-euro crisis fund to be mobilized from the bloc’s farming subsidy budget.

The Commission said it was monitoring the situation closely.

“Severe drought in Southern Europe is particularly worrying, not only for the farmers there but also because this can push up already very high consumer prices if the EU production is significantly lower,” Commission spokesperson Miriam Garcia Ferrer said.

Similar struggles are expected in Italy, where up to 80% of the country’s water supply goes toward agriculture. But with this year’s thin mountain snow cover and low soil moisture, Italian farmers are planning to cut back – sowing summer crops across an area 6% smaller than last year’s planting area, according to national data on sowing intentions.

After two years of water scarcity, northern Italy has a 70% deficit in snow water reserves and a 40% deficit of soil moisture, said Luca Brocca, a Director of Research at Italy’s National Research Council.

Such deep shortages set the stage for a repeat of last year’s summer, when Italy suffered its most severe drought in 70 years.

“2022 was really exceptional. And also this year, it seems to be really exceptional,” Brocca said.

($1 = 0.9084 euros)

Reporting by Kate Abnett; editing by Katy Daigle and Sharon Singleton

How markets and consumers can drive sustainability

May 16, 2023

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The image above is for illustration and is from Harvard Business Review.

16 May 2023

Experts spotlight key areas where competition and consumer protection policies can promote sustainable consumption and production.

Ensuring responsible consumption and production patterns – as outlined in the UN Sustainable Development Goal 12 – requires minimizing environmental impacts, enhancing resource efficiency and reducing waste.

In this regard, experts point out that competition and consumer protection policies are uniquely placed to help.

The UN General Assembly has entrusted UNCTAD as the focal point within the UN system for competition and consumer protection.

“Competition and consumer protection policies are conducive to improving the efficiency and fairness of markets and are therefore well placed to serve public policy goals,” said Teresa Moreira, head of competition and consumer policies at UNCTAD, while opening a high-level session of the UN Trade Forum 2023 on 9 May.

The meeting gathered experts from academia, international organizations as well as government agencies from Austria, Cabo Verde, Greece, Kenya, Russia and South Africa.

Their conversations revolved around a new UNCTAD report, which examines connections among sustainability, consumer protection and competition policies.

They also discussed success stories and potential opportunities where such policies can enable markets to work better for sustainable development.

Addressing challenges to public-private partnerships

Long-term cooperation between governments and businesses, also known as public-private partnerships (PPPs), can help advance sustainability, as evidenced by Kenya’s experience.

Kenya, home to over 50 million people, generates about 22,000 metric tons of waste per day, around 60% of which is recyclable – according to Ninette K. Mwarania, who works on planning, policy and research for the country’s competition authority.

To bolster the circular economy, Kenya is drawing on PPPs to mobilize much-needed private funding for sustainable waste management, which is capital-intensive.

The country also uses PPPs to help connect remote villages to the power grid, expanding electricity coverage while reducing the use of CO2-emitting kerosene lamps.

But such partnerships pose competition challenges too, often foreclosing smaller businesses. Given the long-term nature and amount of investment required to participate in these agreements, only a few private-sector players are eligible.

“Competition regulators need to optimally interpret competition law and policy to accommodate such agreements,” Ms Mwarania said.

Competition guidance to keep up

When sustainability and competition conflict, experts call for clearer guidance on what is permitted under competition law.

Doing so entails identifying sustainability benefits that can lead to efficiency gains – for all citizens rather than individual consumers – to offset anticompetitive effects.

For example, in Austria, draft guidelines recognize biodiversity as an efficiency gain.

“As companies need certainty for their actions, we published guidelines for sustainability agreements in 2022,” said Natalie Harsdorf-Borsch, director-general of the Austrian federal competition authority.

“On this basis, companies can assess whether their cooperation is in line with Austrian competition law.”

Consumer education remains vital

According to UNCTAD’s world consumer protection map, consumer education initiatives related to sustainable consumption cover only 37 out of 104 countries where information is available.

For consumers to make sustainable choices, they need accurate and reliable information about what they buy from markets.

“By ensuring that consumers are well-informed on the impact of their choices and that their rights are protected, we can create a marketplace that incentivizes companies to prioritize sustainability, benefiting both consumers and our planet,” said Jorge Laguna-Celis, who leads the One Planet Network, hosted by the UN Environment Programme.

Policies to forge collective efforts

Fostering sustainable consumerism is a shared responsibility among all market actors, including governments, businesses, consumers and relevant civil society organizations.

As recommended by UN guidelines for consumer protection, countries should develop and implement a policy mix to encourage sustainable consumption and production.

They can enact sectoral policies concerning land use, transport, energy and housing, remove subsidies that contribute to unsustainable patterns and promote sector-specific best practices in environmental management.

Besides, governments should guide businesses in sustainably designing, producing and distributing goods and services.

They should also enforce consumer protection laws against misleading and unfair commercial practices, particularly related to false environmental claims and greenwashing.

UNCTAD

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Accelerating low-carbon building design & development

SOM: Accelerating low-carbon building design & development