Dr. Shobhakar organizes a key Theme ‘Urban Design and Sustainable Buildings” at Global Science, Technology and Innovation Conference in Brussels on 23 – 25 October, 2017. Participants, representing policymakers, technology researchers, business and industry captains, and civil society attended the meeting. The text below is a summary of the major messages emerging from the meeting.
The challenges and potentials
- Sustainable buildings are key cornerstones of the global sustainability quest – Buildings account 32 % of global final energy use (2010); 19 % of energy-related GHG emissions (including electricity-related) (IPCC, 2014); linked to resources consumption, energy and climate security; rapid urbanization; 80 % of current energy use in buildings globally could be ‘locked in’
- Cost-effective and best practice technologies can help us to stabilise or reduce energy use from current level → as opposed to doubling or tripling by mid-century in BAU scenario
- Avenues for innovation in sustainable buildings are many – Construction materials; energy efficient building design; improving efficiency in operation of the buildings
- New building design know-how and practices can reduce 2 to 10 fold reduction in energy in new buildings (incl behavioral change) IPCC (2014)
- In existing buildings 50 – 90 % energy savings have been achieved throughout the world through deep retrofits → Building envelop considerations, lighting, insulation, HVAC, and other technologies (IPCC 2014)
- The economic argument: Technologies enable construction and retrofit of very low- and zero-energy buildings, often at little marginal investment cost, typically paying back well-within the building lifetime
- New opportunities due to digital age: New avenues for efficiency → Building automation, sensors, IoT, integrated lighting
The Barriers
- Considerable barriers to tap large potentials offered by technologies → lack of awareness, imperfect information, split incentives, transaction costs, inadequate access to financing, and industry fragmentation
- Market forces alone cannot achieve diffusion of technologies and technological know-how for the scale of needed transformation → Strong policies are necessary for generating demand for ‘sustainable’ buildings and up-scaling best practices
- A broad portfolio of effective policy instruments available to remove these barriers
What are the most important few key technological solution/consideration that make buildings sustainable
- Thinking systemic and integrated approach: LCA approach (construction materials, building design, operation and automation etc.); optimizing multiple benefits (resources, energy, comfort, cost etc); a suits of technologies (integrated technologies) (no silver bullets); majority of technologies already exist, some are evolving
- Building Design: Passive design, multiple-systems integrated in the same buildings to suit different seasonal requirement; local-climate sensitive design, better integration of renewable energy at design stage itself
- Building Operation: Retrofitting existing buildings; Integrated lightings; IoT, automation (BEMS, sensors) inside the buildings
What are few key changes that must happen to enable sustainable buildings?
- Comprehensive building codes → including building envelopes → voluntary and aspirational to mandatory → LCA consideration → for new buildings, retrofits → New standards and labeling for new developments aimed at housing developers → moving beyond individual buildings
- Technical demonstration of benefits → awareness creation → many positive externalities are often not quantified
- Enabling investment and innovative financial mechanisms in energy efficiency → supporting the economic arguments → incremental cost is small
- Making incentives right →Addressing split-incentives → Harmonizing benefits to developer, owner and user
- Aiming for transformational change: Policies must aim for transformation change – policies must create demand for sustainable buildings → start acting NOW !!
