The GlobalABC Work Areas

The GlobalABC currently has five Work Areas. All aim to address key barriers to a zero-emission, efficient, and resilient buildings and construction sector from a different angle. Our members self-select into our Work Areas depending on interest and expertise.

AWARENESS AND EDUCATION

Purpose in one sentence: We support building capacity to promote the transition towards a zero-emission and resilient built environment globally as well as raising awareness of the potential and urgency of transforming the sector.

Strategy and main objectives: This Work Area is tasked with raising awareness among stakeholders, communicating key messages and insights to the GlobalABC members and beyond as well as disseminating promising education and training initiatives and identifying any gaps that need addressing:

Identifying and dissemination novel, promising approaches and solutions towards a zero-emission, efficient, and resilient buildings and construction sector.
Sharing best practices.
Disseminating training and education opportunities, including relevant contributions to the Global Status Report for Buildings and Construction.

Top priorities for the Work Area in 2022:

A directory of no-cost/low-cost building decarbonization training resources (on-line and presentation) by country, language and topic.
Social media tools for market development, applicable to the entire buildings value chain, which include basic global materials which can be tailored by local partners.
A living database of circular economy case studies utilizing a common meta-structure, potentially linked to a contest.

Work Area co-chairs include:

Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development of Senegal
One Planet Network Sustainable Buildings and Construction Programme (SBC)
Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC)

Contact the GlobalABC Secretariat to get in touch with Work Area 1 at global.abc[at]un.org.

PUBLIC POLICIES

Purpose in one sentence: Unite the numerous, independent and scattered buildings and construction sector’s stakeholders, in particular public authorities, through facilitating consistent, effective regulation, especially building codes, Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), norms, financial and fiscal incentives.

Strategy and main objectives

Showcase the buildings and construction sector’s stakeholder policies and enable peer-to-peer learning at international level.
Mobilise GlobalABC members to facilitate national strategies for zero-emission, efficient, and resilient buildings, and establishing national alliances.
Promote the integration of sustainable buildings in NDCs.
Enable city and subnational engagement.
Engage buildings stakeholders to engage in climate change adaptation policies.

Work Area 2 set up a dedicated subgroup on the topic of adaptation. Spurred by Morocco it is coordinated by OID (Observatoire de L’immobilier Durable), ADEME, and the French Ministry for Ecological Transition (MTE) and brings together ten members of the GlobalABC (countries, intergovernmental, civil society) with contributions from 30 additional members. The group released in January 2021, in the occasion of the Climate Adaptation Summit, its "Buildings and Climate Change Adaptation: a Call for Action" report. This report provides guidance to governments on how to include building adaptation actions into their national plans and how to link adaptation and mitigation strategies and actions, throughout the life cycle of buildings. Furthermore, recommendations by type of actor (including investors, developers, insurers), and estimates of the impact of actions and costs are being elaborated. Based these outcomes, the group proposed 10 Principles for Effective Action to policy makers and practitioners to join forces and spread climate change adaptation actions in the building sector and willing to track annual progress.

Top priorities for the Work Area in 2022: Work Area 2 will work on creating and further developing mechanisms to connect and provide visibility to the different building sector public policies conducted by our members, such as organizing GlobalABC digital meetings for country members. We will facilitate the inception of a tracking progress framework by the adaptation substream, and work on new topics such as the building materials topic, with an embodied carbon study to be published this year, and the clean heating forum.

Work Area co-chairs include:

Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK)
French Ministry for Ecological and Inclusive Transition (MTE)
International Energy Agency (IEA)

contact the GlobalABC Secretariat to get in touch with Work Area 2 at global.abc[at]un.org

MARKET TRANSFORMATION

Purpose in one sentence: Engage business and other stakeholders in the decarbonization of the entire building value chain; provide an opportunity to companies to shape the dialogue with national and sub-national policy makers about the enabling framework for private sector action.

Strategy and main objectives: The main focus of WA3 is to develop a guidance for companies to set science-based targets in a way that contributes to the reduction of life-cycle carbon emissions of buildings. It aims to:

Map different stakeholders’ impacts and dependencies along the value chain.
Align different companies’ efforts towards a global GHG emission reduction goal.
Help companies set their carbon reduction targets across their supply chain.

The Work Area engages companies at the global level to raise ambition and share best practice on the decarbonization of the building sector, such as technology innovation, new business and financing models, procurement and value chain collaboration. For this, the WA brings together companies along the full value chain, from material providers, equipment companies to design and construction firms, real estate and finance companies to work together on how they can align their actions. The WA also enables interaction between companies and policy makers to promote an enabling environment. Align different companies’ efforts towards a global GHG emission reduction goal.

Top priorities for the Work Area in 2022: The goal is to familiarize all GlobalABC members with the Work Area core narrative developed in 2021, get further input and explore how to make it practical for each stakeholder group, and to develop a structured approach for how to make market transformation happen, in support of the GlobalABC country commitment process of creating national roadmaps and alliances.

Work Area co-chairs include:

World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD)
Holcim
World Green Building Council (WorldGBC): office[at]worldgbc.org

Or contact the GlobalABC Secretariat to get in touch with Work Area 3 at global.abc[at]un.org

FINANCE

Purpose in one sentence: Contribute to narrowing the public and private finance gap for investments in zero-carbon, efficient, and resilient buildings and construction, including property development.

Strategy and main objectives: This Work Area is tasked with key actions that scale-up finance for a zero-carbon, efficient, and resilient buildings and construction sector through:

Highlighting finance needs for a transition toward a zero-carbon, efficient, and resilient buildings and construction sector.
Mapping existing financing opportunities for a zero-carbon, efficient, and resilient buildings and construction sector.
Promoting innovative financing tools for specific activities.
Enabling reliable information for investors to reduce risk and create value of more efficient buildings.
Enabling funding for policies to conceive and implement energy efficiency in buildings.

Top priorities for the Work Ara in 2022: Work Area Finance will focus on tools and methods for green buildings portfolios in development banks and other finance institutions, discuss whole-life carbon financing and explore collaboration with Work Area 5 on digital data for financing.

Work Area co-chairs include:

Programme for Energy Efficiency in Buildings (PEEB)
International Finance Corporation (IFC)

Contact the GlobalABC Secretariat to get in touch with Work Area 4 at global.abc[a]un.org .

BUILDING MEASUREMENT, DATA AND INFORMATION

Purpose in one sentence: This Work Area works toward a fair and harmonized measurement system basis to close the information gap and to support buildings and construction policy & investment with Measurable, Reportable and Verifiable (MRV) Data.

Strategy and main objectives: The Work Area bases its activities on survey findings which aimed to determine what type of data is captured by the buildings and construction sector, how data varies across regions, and what challenges exist, including data storage, reporting, availability, collection, accessibility and quality. This Work Areas aims for a fair and harmonized measurement system basis through:

Develop guideline on scope of building passport (living document).
Gain greater international visibility.
Assess possible cross-task cooperation on data relevant issues (for example science-based targets).
Test format or Building Passport.

Work Area co-chairs include:

CUES Foundation
Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS)
International Energy Agency (IEA)
State Agency on Energy Efficiency and Energy Saving (SEEA)

CAPSA Digital Building Passport Platform:

CAPSA is a digital building passport data platform, developed by CUES Foundation (one of the co-chairs of the GlobalABC Work Area 5: Building measurement, data and information) and in partnership including with the Horizon Europe framework as well as with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction (GlobalABC).

A Building Passport (sometimes referred to as a Digital Building Logbook or (Electronic) Building File) is a whole life cycle repository of building information. It covers a building’s administrative documentation as well as data regarding its plot and location, its technical and functional characteristics, and its environmental, social and financial performance. In its fully digital realization, the Building Passport acts as a single point of input, access and visualization of all the information associated with a building. It is a living document, containing a mix of traceable static “as built” and continuous dynamic record‑keeping of performance data and information. Learn more from our report The Building Passport: A Tool for Capturing and Managing Whole Life Data and Information in Construction and Real Estate.

The CAPSA Digital Building Passport prototyping platform was developed to flank the strategic activities of the GlobalABC around the topic with a way to feasibility test ideas and methodologies. CAPSA consists of a smartphone app for data collection as well as a corresponding cloud-based data base. The smartphone app aims to enable non-expert users to generate robust and comparable data. Data collection focussed on hard and visible information, entered one info at a time. Besides direct data entry, photos are taken for context and image recognition purposes. Learn more about CAPSA from this flyer.

Contact the GlobalABC Secretariat to get in touch with Work Area 5 at [email protected]

Download our Work Area overview