The excerpt below is from an article written by Martina Otto, Head of UNEP's Cities Unit and GlobalABC Secretariat for URBANET.  

For full article click here.

Zero carbon buildings and construction are essential to meet the Paris Agreement goals, improve climate resilience and create jobs as part of COVID-19 recovery. However, the buildings and construction sector is not living up to its potential. What can be done? By Martina Otto

With its almost 40 per cent share of energy-related CO2 emissions globally, the buildings and construction sector is among the high impact areas for climate action. Sustainable technologies are known and proven, and a good number of them are among the most cost-effective climate solutions. Yet, the sector is not on track.

The Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction (GlobalABC) has just released its fifth annual Global Status Report for Buildings and Construction, which tracks progress in the sector. The report found that CO2 emissions from the operation of buildings have increased to their highest level ever at around 10 billion giga tons of carbon dioxide (GtCO2), or 28 per cent of total global energy-related CO2 emissions, and building construction adds a further 3.5 CtCO2 or 10 per cent.

Worse even, the new Buildings Climate Tracker shows that decarbonisation progress is losing momentum and has, in fact, almost halved from 2016 to 2019. Consequently, we now need to accelerate the annual decarbonisation of buildings by a factor of 5.

The article also sheds light on the path forward: triple strategy to reduce energy demand and CO2 emissions, pathways towards zero carbon buildings, and building back better. Read it here.