Focus Areas

1. Buildings & Climate Change - Providing input to the Kyoto Protocol on better supporting energy efficiency projects in the building sector
    
2. Benchmarking Performance - Establishing a global benchmarking system for sustainable buildings;
    
3. Policy - Assisting governments to develop policy tools and packages supporting sustainable building & construction
    
4. Developing Countries - Develop and promote the benefits of Sustainable Building Approaches in Developing Countries.

BUILDINGS & CLIMATE CHANGE

Buildings & Climate Change 2009 ACTION PLAN

Aim: The focus of activity for the Buildings an Climate Change focus area is firstly on cnvincing country delegations to the UNFCCC Conferences of the Parties (COPS) that the building sector needs to be prioritized in the next global climate change treaty. This must be achieved before the COP 15 in Copenhagen, December 2009.

All effort is therefore to be directed to influencing this meeting. The fundamental messages are:

• that developed countries will not be able to meet their existing Kyoto Protocol commitments without supporting the building sector to reduce emissions.
• for developing countries the fundamental message is that encouraging zero-emissions/positive energy and energy efficiency buildings is fundamental to achieving sustainable development goals not only because of the reduced life-cycle costs of buildings and required energy infrastructure, but also because of the potential for creating employment while improving environmental and public health.
• for these reasons measures for investing in building projects (both new and renovation) that reduce or eliminate emissions must therefore be included in the new global treaty. To this end reform of the CDM is also essential.

Reports:

• Buildings & Climate Change (2007) – Link to pdf download page
• The Kyoto Protocol, The Cleaner Development Mechanism and the Building and Construction Sector – Link to pdf download page.

BENCHMARKING - SUSTAINABLE BUILDINGS & CONSTRUCTION INDEX

Aim:
Develop global consensus on core goals, issues, principles, criteria, indicators and performance requirements for sustainable buildings.

The work is conducted by a Think Tank composed of over 30 international experts, including leading national rating schemes, the International Standards Organization and others.

Sustainable Buildings & Construction Index – SBC Index
SBCI will develop the framework for national and sectoral reporting on the state of sustainable buildings and construction. This will provide an as yet absent global picture of the base-line conditions in different countries in relation to sustainability targets.

The SBC Index will be employed to establish baseline descriptions of the performance of building sectors and provide a basis for:

• Defining  Sustainable Buildings & Construction;
• Enabling country-country comparisons and provide an advocacy tool;
• Generating a state-of-play report periodically that would communicate the contribution of the building sector to greenhouse gas emission reductions and sustainable development goals;
• Providing a capacity building reporting platform for building sector stakeholders.

Latest Progress

• Building Global Consensus on Core Issues: Workshop conducted by Dr. Greg Foliente, CSIRO - report due by end of January.
• Case Studies Report – Being finalised by Prof. Volker Hartkopf, Carnegie Mellon University
• Knowledge Base for Sustainable Building: Desk Study - in final draft being finalised by BRE and CSTB

POLICY

SBCI will establish an SB Policy Think Tank in 2009. This follows the successful work of the Policy Working Group who have, under the leadership of the Central European University Centre for Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Policy (http://3csep.ceu.hu/ ) identified the most cost-efficienct and effective policy packages for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the building sector and built a web-tool to access a data-base of policy instruments.

Reports:

• Assessment of Policy Instruments for Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Buildings (2007) - Link to pdf download site

Tools:

• The Policy ‘Quick-Scan’ Tool – review version: http://uosis.mif.vu.lt/~jasaitis/sbci/

The Policy Think Tank will:

• Focus on both developed and developing countries
• Link the SB policy agenda with “big issues” such climate change, green jobs, health, economic development. Explore and explain how potential “collisions” of the above priorities can be solved (e.g. sustainable buildings and social housing)
• Establish an SB policy index for cities/countries to be linked to the Human development Index, and to be published in the UNEP’s GEO reports, or a as a free standing index. As part of this work SBCI should undertake a critical review of state of policies in key developing countries/cities
• Build on already initiated SBCI work, such as SUSHI and SPOD, to provide guidance to governments and authorities on how to develop realistic hands-on SB policies
• Base work on a wide cooperation with organizations and governments (use UNEP’s role as convener)

DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

This is a cross-cutting theme noting that UNEP SBCI will focus first assisting countries who have the least resources to initiate sustainability innovation in their building sector.