COP22 put built environment at the forefront of climate change action

Note: This post was originally published on The Fifth Estate on 23 November 2016. 

Cities and local governments were especially evident at the Low-Emissions Solutions Conference held during last week’s COP22 global climate talks in Marrakech, Morocco, where a Handbook on creating dynamic local markets for Energy Efficient Buildings was launched.

The handbook uses a business-led approach piloted in 10 cities over the last four years to develop and implement action plans on energy efficiency in buildings.

Multi-stakeholder relationships in the building value chain and how they need to come together to promote energy efficiency in buildings. Source: WBCSD (2015), adapted from Energy Efficiency in Buildings, Business Realities and Opportunities, Facts and Trends.

The handbook goes through the steps involved and how to bring together the many different groups that comprise the buildings sector.

A key example from the handbook is taken from Poland, a country not normally noted for its action on climate change. It describes how a multi-stakeholder partnership set up in 2014 has, by November 2016, already set up a residential buildings energy efficiency financing facility of €200 million (AU$287m), produced a benchmarking report on operation costs in commercial buildings, and created a platform for public-private dialogue and action.

It is part of an initiative called EEB Amplify, launched on COP22’s Buildings and Cities Day with the aim of scaling up the Energy Efficiency in Buildings program from 10 cities to 50 by 2020. ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability is currently working with 1500 cities across the world.

EEB Amplify is a partnership with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and Climate-KIC in Europe, the US Green Building Council and US Business Council for Sustainable Development, and the Indian Green Building Council. Its expansion will begin in 2017 and aims to include 50 cities by 2020.

Why different stakeholders should get involved in an energy efficiency market engagement, in what capacity, and what they stand to gain. Source: Extract from Energy Efficiency Market Report 2015, IEA adapted from IEA (2014), Capturing the Multiple Benefits of Energy Efficiency, OECD/IEA, Paris.

It’s time to get down to business

COP22 was all about implementation. There was a shared feeling that the Paris Agreement and the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals have created an irreversible and irresistible pathway to a low-carbon world and now, despite what has happened in America, the task is just to get on with it.

On display at the conference were materials, construction innovation, technologies for energy efficiency, adaptation and resilience, and sustainable mobility across electric and fuel cell vehicles.

No new fossil fuel infrastructure

NGO and government leaders spoke at a press conference about how subnational governments and major cities around the world – including in the US and Canada – are adopting No New Fossil Fuel Infrastructure policies and pledges.

Cities across the Western US who have signed up to the No New Fossil Fuel Infrastructure policy include Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, and uptake is accelerating.

100 per cent renewable energy

Many cities and governments signalled an intention to move cities and regions away from all fossil fuel export infrastructure and towards 100 per cent renewable energy. Many already are.

US Secretary of State John Kerry announced the Obama Administration’s plan for deep decarbonisation, even though the Trump administration could well undo it.

While acknowledging the uncertainty Trump’s win creates, he predicted that markets would continue to drive the transition to clean energy sources for economic reasons, and that the question was whether it would happen sufficiently fast to avoid catastrophic climate damage.

“The US plan for deep decarbonisation Secretary Kerry unveiled today is a welcome recognition of the need for urgent action, however, it does not go nearly far enough,” observed Daphne Wysham, director of the climate and energy program at the Center for Sustainable Economy.

So city representatives joined 47 governments forming the Climate Vulnerable Forum, business and civil society including from Morocco, Ethiopia and Costa Rica, the City of Oslo, the Australian Capital Territory Government, Sumba Islands and corporations like Mars and IKEA to talk about the movement towards 100 per cent renewable energy cities.

COP22 President Salaheddine Mezouar said that “renewable energies do not only mitigate our impact on climate change but open the way to new models of sustainable development with new investments, new industries and new jobs”.

Sustainable cities and built environments

The COP22 Low-Emissions Solutions Conference established four work streams:

1. National and regional low-carbon strategies: mid-century strategies, deep decarbonisation pathways, and implementation at national, regional and local scales; and solutions and innovations spotlight
2. Information and communications technologies: the contribution of ICT to climate action in other sectors; and innovative approaches to raising commitments towards climate action
3. Sustainable cities and built environments: local climate action – strategies and implementation; and smart low-carbon and sustainable cities
4. Low-carbon transport: introduction to mobility challenges and innovation in the transport sector; and electric and hydrogen mobility.

The built environment is at the heart of all of of these work streams.

Following the conference, Gino Van Begin, secretary general of ICLEI, called upon all stakeholders – business, the research community and all levels of government – to get together with local governments to “implement and take up new technologies that facilitate low emission, resilient development” and to “allow innovation to happen and to be effectively applied”.

Only by working together will they, and by definition, the world, “build a strong architecture needed to support implementation of the Paris Agreement”, he said.

Peter Bakker, president and CEO of the WBCSD echoed this, saying the conference showed “how business, government, academia, cities and other experts are already delivering the solutions that will define future competitiveness in the low-carbon economy”.

Cities100

Cities100 was another highlight of the cities day at COP22. It showcased leading solutions to urban climate challenges in 10 sectors, ranging from solid waste management to transportation, and, for the first time, solutions that address the nexus of climate change and social equity. Amongst the examples in Cities100 were:

• Guang­zhou, China: planning for an increasing population and rising demand for energy using a multi-sector, low carbon plan for green growth targeting infrastructure and buildings
• Kampala, Uganda: instituting energy efficiency and sustainability in all its operations to make itself an example for other African cities.
• Taoyuan, Taiwan: which has a development plan targeting lifestyle changes and the creation of a renewable energy industry.
• New York City, US: its Hous­ing Au­thor­ity has a building retrofit strategy to reduce CO2 emissions, heating costs and make sure that residents in affordable housing have resilient homes.
• Auckland, New Zealand: has set up a revolving fund to enable the city to invest money generated from municipal energy-saving projects into further energy-saving improvements.

C40 chair and Rio de Janeiro mayor Eduardo Paes gave a keynote address at the Sustainable Innovation Forum, which highlighted the importance of mayors and cities in tackling climate change, saying that cities are taking bold actions, but much more needs to be done, including a “coordinated collaboration between all levels of society”.

He talked about how carbon intensive and traditional businesses needed to be reinvented because they “will not have a place in a world facing climate change”, calling this “a great economic opportunity”.

“In the next 15 years, the world is expected to invest around USD $90 trillion in infrastructure. Much of that will happen in cities … Municipal governments cannot leverage those resources alone,” he said.

Climate finance

According to C40’s research, urban policy decisions made in the next four years alone could lock-in almost a third of the remaining global safe carbon budget. This is why C40 supports its member cities in developing targets and climate action plans that are aligned with a 1.5 degree pathway.

C40’s Climate Finance Facility, now in its pilot phase, will support cities in low and middle-income countries in preparing climate change projects to attract investments.

C40’s demands for municipal infrastructure finance.

At the end of November, at the C40 bi-annual Summit in Mexico City, C40 will adopt a new four year business plan with the ambition of the Paris Agreement at its centre.

No to Trump

The 200 countries attending the COP22 conference were united in the face of Donald Trump’s campaign threat to quit the Paris accord on climate change.

“No one country, no one man, no one person can control the outcome of the destiny that we all see as part of the writing on the wall that climate change is real, we need to act and we are going to do everything we can so I definitely think that the speeches over the past several days had that impact and effect on us as a civil society and over other countries as well,” concluded Tina Johnson, policy director at the US Climate Network.

The Marrakech Proclamation, issued at the conclusion of the conference, serves as a message of solidarity against Trump’s threat. The Proclamation contains a resolution to hammer out a rulebook by 2018, and this is its concluding sentence:

“As we now turn towards implementation and action, we reiterate our resolve to inspire solidarity, hope and opportunity for current and future generations.”

David Thorpe is the author of:

• Best Practices and Case Studies for Industrial Energy Efficiency Improvement (with Oung, K. and Fawkes, S. UNEP, 2016)
• A London Conversation: Business Briefing on Green Bonds (The Fifth Estate, 2015)
• The One Planet Life (Introduction: Jane Davidson. Routledge, 2015)
• Earthscan Expert Guide to Energy Management in Buildings (Earthscan, 2013)
• Earthscan Expert Guide to Energy Management in Industry (Earthscan, 2013)
• Earthscan Expert Guide to Solar Technology (Earthscan, 2011)
• Earthscan Expert Guide to Sustainable Home Refurbishment (Earthscan, 2010)

UNEP backs Passivhaus to help meet climate targets

[This post originally appeared on The Fifth Estate website on 9 November.]

As the latest round of global climate talks begins, the UN Environment Programme is calling on nations to ramp up their action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and is explicitly backing the use of the Passivhaus Standard to reduce emissions from buildings.

Thermal image showing how a Passivhaus refurbishment/makeover of a terraced home (the blue one) means it radiates (loses) no heat compared to its neighbours (red and yellow - meaning they are radiating heat. The more red, the more heat is being lost).

Delegates in Marrakesh for yet another climate conference, the 2016 UN Conference of the Parties (COP22), have been studying a report by UNEP on what the world needs to do to meet the requirements of the Paris Agreement and halt dangerous global warming.

COP22 is about following up the just-ratified Paris Agreement. The agreement marks a turning point in the history of the world, establishing both the commitment and the framework for dealing with climate change. COP22 is about fleshing out the detail, and there is a great deal of detail to be fleshed out.

The Intended Nationally Determined Contributions from COP21 form the basis of the Paris Agreement; they are the pledges that each country laid out at year’s negotiations, showing their contribution to tackling climate. But these presently fall well short of achieving COP21’s “well below 2°C” temperature goal.

The Emissions Gap Report

Just in advance of the conference the UNEP issued its “Emissions Gap Report“, which notes the “troubling paradox at the heart of climate policy”.

Erik Solheim

In the words of Erik Solheim, the head of the program, the paradox is that “on the one hand nobody can doubt the historic success of the Paris Agreement, but on the other hand everybody willing to look can already see the impact of our changing climate”.

(Everybody, that is, apart from the Republicans in the US who elected Donald Trump and his cronies. But that is another story.)

This report estimates that we are actually on track for global warming of up to 3.4°C – way over the target. The current commitments made by nations “will reduce emissions by no more than a third of the levels required by 2030 to avert disaster”, he says.

“So, we must take urgent action. If we don’t, we will mourn the loss of biodiversity and natural resources. We will regret the economic fallout. But most of all we will grieve over the avoidable human tragedy.”

Global greenhouse gas emissions continue to grow. UNEP is calling for accelerated efforts now, prior to 2020, and for nations to increase their ambitions in their INDCs.

“Pathways for staying well below 2°C and 1.5°C require deep emission reductions after, and preferably also before 2020, and lower levels of emissions in 2030 than earlier assessed 2°C pathways,” the report says.

The report does identify where solutions are available that can deliver low-cost emission reductions at scale, including the acceleration of energy efficiency.

Much has been said, including by myself, about the effect on emissions by actors who are not nations, such as cities, regions and companies. It’s possible, the report notes, that these could reduce emissions in 2020 and 2030 by a few additional gigatonnes, but it is difficult to assess the overlap with INDCs because these are not usually detailed enough and non-state actions can overlap or mutually reinforce each other.

The importance of energy efficiency

The report emphasises that ambitious action on energy efficiency is urgent. Well-documented opportunities exist to strengthen national policies on energy efficiency.

Studies based on the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that for a cost range of between US$20 and $100 per tonne of carbon dioxide, 5.9 gigatonnes of emissions could be saved from buildings, 4.1 for industry and 2.1 for transport by 2030. These estimates are conservative and the real potential in each sector is likely to be bigger.

A more recent analysis by the International Energy Agency indicates that the cumulative direct and indirect emissions estimates to 2035 are 30 gigatonnes for buildings, 22 for industry and 12 for transport.

The two studies are not comparable due to differences in approaches, but together illustrate the significant potential in the three sectors.

Improving energy efficiency also offers many other benefits like reduced air pollution and local employment.

It is an integral part of Sustainable Development Goal 7, which aims to “ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all”.

The energy efficiency target is to double the global rate of improvement in energy efficiency by 2030, from 1.3 per cent per year to 2.6 per cent. Achieving this goal will be important for achieving many of the other goals:

• Building energy efficiency will be increased by ratcheting up the ambition of energy codes, and increasing monitoring and enforcement of building regulations with the use of energy performance certification and with encouragement to create highly efficient buildings.

• Industrial energy efficiency will be helped the more that companies introduce energy management by adopting ISO 50001 an energy performance monitoring. Energy performance standards need to be enforced for all industrial equipment.

• Transport energy efficiency is improved by the adoption of vehicle fuel economy standards and electric mobility for passenger transport. For freight movements sustainable logistics can be deployed.

There is a huge role for energy service companies to offer these services.

All of these efficiency savings can be encouraged by planning policy. For example:

• Successful zoning can reduce the need to travel, and neighbourhood layouts can reduce the need for heating or cooling.

• Spatial planning can help to improve transit options, increase and co-locate employment and residential densities, and increase the amount of green spaces.

• Heating, cooling and electrical energy services can also be more efficiently delivered at a neighbourhood scale than at a building scale, with distributed renewable or low-carbon energy supplied by local energy service companies.

The Passivhaus standard

The report explicitly advocates the adoption of the Passivhaus standard. Passivhaus, originating in Germany, is primarily a tough quality assurance standard, which demands great attention to detail during the design and construction process to achieve certification.

Key to it is a target that annual final energy use for heating and cooling should not exceed 15 kilowatt hours a square metre a year.

The report says that the global floor area covered by Passivhaus buildings has grown from 10 million sq m in 2010 to 46 million sq m in 2016, with most activity occurring in Europe.

And importantly, it says the price for new Passivhaus buildings in several countries is comparable to standard construction costs.

Initially developed for mid and northern European climates, Passivhaus has been proven to work extremely well in hot climates too. High levels of airtightness and insulation work equally well in protecting buildings from overheating provided there is adequate solar shading.

Controlled mechanical ventilation allows options to pre-cool or pre-heat the supply air and also to humidify or dehumidify the ambient air depending on the relative humidity. In combination these strategies are capable of significantly buffering the daytime temperature swing.

Conventional cross ventilation through open windows and night purge ventilation strategies may also be used as part of the Passivhaus cooling concept when appropriate, such as during the cooler evening of a hot day.

In order to achieve the Passivehaus standard in hot countries, the outer wall must have a U-value between 0.20-0.45 W/m2K.

Depending on the heat-insulating properties of the loadbearing outer walls and on the thermal conductivity of the insulation material used, it may be necessary to install an external thermal insulation system of up to 30cm thickness.

Modern external thermal insulation composite systems based on mineral raw materials combine the best insulating properties with ease of handling. Compared to conventional insulation systems, the additional expense pays off after only a few years.

In climatic regions where the daytime temperature does not drop low enough to purge the accumulated heat gains from the building at night there will be a residual cooling load.

In such cases the Passivhaus standard permits 15 kWh/m2.yr of cooling energy to be used. A small cooling load has proven to be sufficient in almost all cases because the Passivhaus concept is highly effective in reducing unwanted heat gains.

The blower door test is used to detect leaks in the building envelope. The smaller the measured value, the higher the airtightness. Passive houses in hot countries require a value =< 1.0. This means that during the measurement at most 100 per cent of the indoor air volume is allowed to escape through leaky spots within one hour. Experience has shown that values between 0.3 and 0.4 are attainable.

Passivhaus principles can also be applied to refurbishment of existing buildings and achieve impressive results. In the UK there are many examples of ultra-low energy, low carbon retrofits.

At the same time, the Passivhaus Institut has launched a Passivhaus standard for refurbishment projects, known as “EnerPHit”, covering a range of property types, including tower blocks, terraced houses and community centres.

Given that costs are around the same as for conventional buildings but energy costs of using the building are drastically reduced, why are they not more widely adopted?

The main reasons are the lack of ambition in building codes, the lack of awareness, trained construction workers and appropriate monitoring. For the aims of the Paris Agreement to be realised this is just one opportunity that needs to be grasped.

Since the US election, the need to grasp these opportunities has become even more urgent.

David Thorpe is the author of:

• Best Practices and Case Studies for Industrial Energy Efficiency Improvement (with Oung, K. and Fawkes, S. UNEP, 2016)
• A London Conversation: Business Briefing on Green Bonds (The Fifth Estate, 2015)
• The One Planet Life (Introduction: Jane Davidson. Routledge, 2015)
• Earthscan Expert Guide to Energy Management in Buildings (Earthscan, 2013)
• Earthscan Expert Guide to Energy Management in Industry (Earthscan, 2013)
• Earthscan Expert Guide to Solar Technology (Earthscan, 2011)
• Earthscan Expert Guide to Sustainable Home Refurbishment (Earthscan, 2010)

The Paris Agreement: a turning point for the world

Contrast the high emotion and tears in the plenary hall at Le Bourget when the Paris Agreement climate change deal was struck on Saturday night with the response over the next day or two from the fossil fuel industry.

"We are not too worried, to be honest, it does not change much right now," an unnamed senior executive of a utility company owning coal assets told to a Financial Times journalist over the weekend.

The reasons for this coolness are twofold: the core of the deal is not legally binding upon governments; and a global carbon price is only obliquely referred to in the Agreement, while the current European carbon price is too low to make a difference to investment plans. Besides, the oil industry has plenty more pressing problems.

Here is another contrast: the first speeches from the floor that were called by President Laurent Fabian on Saturday evening overwhelmingly applauded the deal, praising the fact that it was the first time that almost all governments of the world had reached accord on a deal to tackle climate change that seemed to have prospect of working. 

It was left to the Nicaraguan representative Paul Oquist to bring everybody down. "Based on science, it is not sufficient to reach a target of 1.5°C but leads us to 3°C of warming instead," he told everyone with a stony face. "I want the world to sign up to a carbon budget now, and more financing from developed countries with guaranteed loss and damage compensation for vulnerable countries like Nicaragua."

He was absolutely right. The deal is not sufficient, it is not perfect, but it was the best that could be managed.

Now for the final contrast that really struck me on the night: Gao Feng, the Chinese representative, made a speech from the floor announcing all of the measures that the Chinese government would now take as a result of the Paris Agreement, and it was impressive. 

He was immediately followed by United States Senator John Kerry who, of course, with an American election coming up next year and a United States Congress dominated by climate sceptic Republicans, could make no such promises. Instead he placed his faith in "the innovative power of American business that will lead the way forward".

Following this speech President Obama issued a tweet crediting American leadership with securing the deal. This was hubris. In fact the credit should go to French leadership, with the French Minister Laurent Fabius, having pulled out all of the diplomatic stops, being widely praised for keeping his calm and measured hand on the tiller throughout.

Wisdom

His was the wisdom of Solomon to the power of n. The Agreement is probably the world's greatest diplomatic triumph so far and one of which it should be justifiably proud.

But the French leadership could not have been possible without the help of South Africa and the spirit of Nelson Mandela – quoted by several speakers – and in particular a South African Zulu and Xhosa tribal decision-making process known as 'indaba'. 

Indaba was used in Durban in 2011 to break deadlocks, and involves diplomats being constrained from repeating their entrenched positions, instead being asked to talk personally and quietly about their positions and propose solutions to each other, while other delegates stand around listening and offering advice.

Last week, when faced by deadlocks and deadlines, Fabius' response was to refine this process by splitting groups into two with specific tasks. Hostile parties spoke to each other constructively. Reports have it that this helped to break down the text and solve disagreements with extraordinary rapidity. 

A West African diplomat told a journalist that: "It is a very effective way to streamline negotiations and bridge differences, being participatory yet fair. It should be used more often."

Some radical green groups, such as 350.org and Global Justice Now have denounced the Paris Agreement for the same reason that Nicaragua did. James Hansen called it a sham. But this is to undermine the exceptional efforts made by their own supporters which helped to push the negotiators as far as they did. It would not have succeeded without them.

Unlike the Kyoto Protocol, the Paris Agreement is something that can be worked with by everybody. 

Investment

The crucial factor that will remove obstacles to its progress is an adequate level of finance.

Governments of developed countries are now encouraged by the 19-page supplement to the 12-page Paris Agreement document to set a new goal of giving over $100 billion per year to developing countries as climate finance for adaptation purposes by 2025. 

This may be a problem given the current political and financial situation in countries such as the US and the UK. Since the US produces 15% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, a way must be found around Republican opposition.

But while national governments wring their hands over being asked to spend billions, businesses are talking about spending trillions. This deal would not have been possible without big business both before and during Paris calling for an ambitious result.

The "Breakthrough Energy Coalition" http://www.breakthroughenergycoalition.com/en/index.html includes Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg,  and 27 other billionaire investors plus the University of California. It is a "network of private capital committed to building a structure... to help accelerate the change to the advanced energy future our planet needs."

The Green Infrastructure Investment Coalition was another network launched in Paris last week with the aim of promoting investment into sustainable infrastructure. Its 13 founding members include Deutsche Bank, four Indian banks, Ceres in the USA, the European Investment Bank and the Australasian Investor Group on Climate Change. http://www.unpri.org/whatsnew/green-infrastructure-investment-coalition-launched-at-cop21/ Foundation members are the Climate Bonds Initiative, the Principles for Responsible Investment, UNEP Inquiry and the International Cooperative Mutual Insurers Federation (ICMIF).

India's International Solar Alliance http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/energy-and-environment/modi-launches-international-solar-alliance/article7934560.ece, also announced in Paris, will attract $1 trillion for solar energy infrastructure in equatorial countries.

U.S. multinational banks have set up their own funds: Goldman Sachs' is worth $150 billion, Citi's $100 billion and the Bank of America's is worth $125 billion.

Earlier this year, Apple, Walmart, Goldman Sachs and 10 other companies announced at the White House that they would pledge $140 billion in low carbon investments, and install 1,600 megawatts of new renewable energy.  

Corporate members of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development launched a Low Carbon Technology Partnerships initiative of corporate investments. http://unsdsn.org/what-we-do/climate-change/ppps-for-technology/

And that's just a start

How much would it cost, however, to meet the aspirations enshrined in the Paris Agreement? According to the International Energy Agency (IEA)'s "World Energy Outlook, Special Briefing for COP 21", published before the Paris talks began, which evaluated the cost of meeting the target set by 160 countries that submitted their INDCs (Intended Nationally Determined Contributions), the bill is $13.5 trillion. But this would not meet the 1.5°C target, instead only bringing rising temperatures down to 3°C above preindustrial levels. 

$13.5 trillion equates to $900 billion per year, according to Val Smith, director of corporate sustainability at Citi. Since that date, as well, a further 29 INDCs have been submitted which will push the bill up. 

A reasonable estimate of the final cost might therefore be around $2 trillion per year. Yet much of this sum might be spent anyway in upgrading existing infrastructure and building new necessary infrastructure, and much of the investment will be in plant and technology that will actually save money by reducing energy and health costs.

Yet to this total we must add the cost of adaptation, which, of course, becomes less the more money is put into mitigation. And the countries which really need adaptation measures and sustainable infrastructure often do not have the wherewithal to handle big investments, such as competent local banks, legal systems and a skilled workforce.

Big investors like Goldman Sachs will only help countries on their own terms. Private finance, while key to the success of the project, will only go so far. That $100 billion a year from governments will be necessary.

Nevertheless, the Paris Agreement represents a turning point for the world. Now we now need action, and that is the theme of the next Conference of the Parties, COP22, according to its host country Morocco. This will be in eleven months, in Marrakesh.