UN Climate Change News, 7 June 2024 - Reducing the greenhouse gas emissions of cities and urban buildings was the focus of the third Global Dialogue and Investment-focused Event held under the Mitigation Work Programme 27 to 29 May 2024 in Bonn.

The Dialogues were launched at the COP27 UN Climate Change Conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, with the aim of exploring solutions in specific key sectors of the economy to limit global heating within the temperature thresholds of the Paris Agreement.

According to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), buildings account for more than 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions when all emissions generated by their construction and use are considered. This makes them a key part of the solution when it comes to fighting climate change.

Yamina Saheb, lead author for the IPCC, warned that existing policies have failed to decarbonize the global building stock and are not able to make buildings climate neutral in the future.

“With current policies, emissions from buildings are set to increase. We need to avoid emissions from the outset, avoiding demand for energy, land, water and all natural resources,” she said.

Saheb was among almost 240 participants representing 75 countries and 40 international organizations and non-Party stakeholders at the Dialogue, which took place ahead of the June UN Climate Meetings (SB60).

Technical and regulatory solutions ready to be deployed

Jan Rosenow of the Regulatory Assistance Project drew attention to surging demand for air conditioning amid rising temperatures that would lead to unsustainable levels of energy consumption. He noted that there are technical and regulatory solutions waiting to be deployed at scale.

“There is a good match between solar radiation and cooling demands. There are solutions in terms of building design and using much more efficient cooling designs. But we still have very poorly designed cooling systems that could operate at much greater efficiency. The most important policy tool is energy performance standards. This instrument works, and we should make more use of it,” he said.

Everything from the outer walls to the roof and basement of a building (referred to as the ‘envelope’ of a building) plays a key role in how much energy is needed for heating and cooling. Experts explained that:

• Replacing carbon-intensive building materials such as cement or steel with natural material such as hemp and wood can not only reduce emissions, but can also store carbon dioxide that is removed from the atmosphere as trees or plants grow.
• Green infrastructure, such as green walls, green roofs, rain gardens, trees or green spaces improve air quality and mitigate urban heat islands.
• While material in existing buildings cannot be easily recovered, repaired or recycled, new buildings could be designed in a way that individual components can be easily removed and reused.

There are good examples of what is possible. A programme in Colombia, which was showcased during the meeting, aims to reduce embodied carbon emissions from concrete and cement in the country’s booming construction sector and to shift to more sustainable methods and materials, with a comprehensive strategy for monitoring and managing. Reducing emissions from the construction sector could contribute as much as 37% towards achieving the overall goal of 51% reduction of greenhouse gases by 2030 according to the latest Nationally Determined Contribution of Colombia.

Other issues raised include:

• Consideration of specific local context to accelerate the speed and scale of action. Factors such as the availability of local building materials, the skill level of the local workforce, finance mechanisms, and socioeconomic inequalities play important roles.
• Collaboration between national governments, regional and local authorities is crucial to strengthening climate action related to the buildings sector.
• Reducing emissions and promoting sustainable development go hand in hand.

The full report of the meeting will be prepared after the end of the June climate meetings in Bonn. Looking ahead, the fourth installment of the series of global dialogues and investment-focused events will take place by or around the end of September 2024, with the venue and exact timing to be announced. Read more here.

About the Mitigation Work Programme

The Sharm el-Sheikh Mitigation Ambition and Implementation Work Programme (MWP) was launched at the UN Climate Change Conference COP27 in Egypt and will continue until 2026, with at least two global dialogues held each year.  The MWP is designed to help the global community urgently scale up mitigation ambition and implementation in this critical decade.