From Mumbai to Dubai to Shanghai, from New York to West Yorkshire, from Sao Paulo to Toronto, from Johannesburg to Bangkok, green building projects are up, on the rise, and on the drawing boards. There's more going on, though, than just the construction of new green buildings. There are exciting initiatives underway for sustainable cities and more prosaic but equally important programs for retrofitting existing buildings. Architects, engineers, policy wonks, public officials, the real estate and construction industries, manufacturers and financial institutions, are increasingly embracing this approach.
Look at the Masdar Initiative in Abu Dhabi. This is a sweeping program not only to create an international research network on renewable energy, including a significant graduate school component in the Masdar Institute, and a $250 million clean tech fund, but also to build a small sustainable hi-tech community. Opening in 2009, Masdar (“the source” in Arabic) will be a six square kilometer (1,483 acre) walled campus with no cars, no waste, and virtually no carbon output.
A much larger project is set to be built on 750-square-mile Chongming Island, in the mouth of the Yangtze River at Shanghai. There are nearly 600,000 people currently living on Chongming. There are plans to develop eight cities along the coast and 40 farm villages along a spine of new lakes in the island's center devoted to raising organic foods, all of which will coexist in close proximity to an enormous wildlife preserve. The denizens of Chongming will use only 15 percent of the island's area, and the first phase of the largest of Chongming's “eco-cities,” Dongtan, is slated to be completed by 2010 at the opening of the World Expo in Shanghai.
These are but two examples, albeit particularly exciting ones, of the intense activity that is taking place internationally on the green building and sustainable living front. In 2005, there was an estimated $6 trillion in the value of new construction around the world. A relatively small proportion of that is in green building now, but projects and plans are mushrooming at a rapid pace.
Several international organizations are taking the lead in fostering this growth. One of the most important of these is the World Green Building Council, a union of national green building councils. There are now ten national councils, including one in the U.S., and the nations they represent account for over 50 percent of global construction activity. In addition, there are 16 “emerging” green building councils in other countries, while China has just created an analogous organization that does not fit the WGBC criteria for membership but will be doing similar work nonetheless.
Kevin Hydes, the chair of the Toronto-based WGBC and an engineer, told me that there are excellent synergies between the organization and its host city. Toronto's mayor, David Miller, is an active and articulate leader in confronting the specter of the climate change crisis, while the Ontario provincial administration assiduously courted the relocation of the WGBC headquarters there and is itself very much in the forefront of addressing sustainability issues.
The WGBC grew, in part, from the work of the hugely influential U.S. Green Building Council, the progenitor of the LEED certification program. LEED stands for “Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design” and is a much sought-after designation these days.
How popular is the green building movement? “Greenbuild,” an annual conference and expo, for example, attracted 13,329 registrants last year, with 477 exhibitors and with 43 countries represented.
The World Business Council on Sustainable Development is a CEO-led, global association of some 200 companies with members drawn from more than 35 countries and 20 major industrial sectors. The Council also has a global network of about 60 national and regional business councils and regional partners. Corporations represented include Alcan, Toyota, Royal Dutch Shell, Petrobras, Nokia, 3M, GE, GM, IBM and others.
Led by Lafarge, the Paris-based multinational that is a major supplier of building materials, and United Technologies Corp., the WBCSD's “Energy Efficiency in Buildings” (EEB) project aims to create conditions by 2050 that will allow for all new buildings in the world to “...consume zero net energy from external power supplies and produce zero net carbon dioxide emissions while being economically viable to construct and operate.” A series of three reports will culminate in a unified industry strategy for reaching these ambitious goals.
In a recent interview, Björn Stigson, WBCSD's president, said: “Society has reached a tipping point in terms of doing something about climate change that is as emotional as it is scientific. And this emotion is going to drive what politicians see as realistic. Those in the real estate industry who are ready for rapid change are going to be the winners in the next few decades.”
Meanwhile, thousands of existing buildings all over the world will benefit from a major new initiative announced in May by former U.S. President Bill Clinton at the C40 Large Cities Climate Summit. Four multinational energy service companies, five global banks, and sixteen cities have partnered with the Clinton Foundation to retrofit buildings in an effort to make world cities more sustainable. “The businesses, banks and cities partnering with my foundation are ... going to save money, make money, create jobs and have a tremendous collective impact on climate change all at once,” Clinton said. London Mayor Ken Livingstone, Chair of the C40, agreed, noting that the program, “will make it financially feasible for cities to radically cut emissions from buildings.”
The Paris-based Union Internationale des Architectes is also deeply involved in the movement for green building. The theme for World Architecture Day 2007, to be observed on October 1, is “Promoting Zero CO2 Emission Architecture.” UIA encompasses the key professional organizations of architects in 116 countries and territories and represents, through these organizations, more than 1.3 million architects worldwide. UIA has programs dedicated to both “sustainable architecture” and “architecture and renewable energy sources” (ARES).
Where is the United Nations in all of this? Well, UNEP (United Nations Environment Program) has a robust Sustainable Buildings and Construction Initiative (SBCI). (This is not to be confused with the U.S.-based Sustainable Buildings Industry Council - or SBIC - which has its own very worthy program.) SBCI is led by a board of international building and construction executives, with a secretariat in Paris. Their objective is to promote and support sustainable practices in the sector using a “life cycle” approach that estimates the accumulated environmental, social and economic impact of a building throughout its life span. SBCI issued a major report, “Buildings and Climate Change: Status, Challenges and Opportunities” in March which highlighted, among other things, the extraordinary opportunities for GHG reduction in green buildings and the importance of “leapfrog” technology for emerging giants like India and China.
Here are some useful numbers from SBCI on the economic impact of the building and construction sector worldwide: 111 million people directly employed with 75% employed in developing countries with the industry accounting for 10 percent of global GDP.
The U.S. government could probably be doing more to promote these powerful international initiatives, through USAID and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), among other organizations. In the meantime, our own nongovernmental organizations, such as the U.S. Green Building Council and the American Institute of Architects, are doing superb work in this area, as are some of our leading corporations such as United Technology Corp., Honeywell, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, and a host of others.
There is great art, skill and the application of a powerful will in the burgeoning of the international green building movement. Major international institutions from critical sectors such as finance, industry, and building and construction, along with governments at the local, national and international levels as well as non-profits are all putting their shoulders to the wheel to build a new sustainable infrastructure for our planet. Because of the overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change and the resultant growing vocal demand by leaders from these sectors and others, action plans and initiatives are springing up all over the world. There are trillions of dollars, and millions of lives and livelihoods at stake. The international green building movement exemplifies a continuing recognition by people and institutions of the manifest value of sustainable living.
Bill Hewitt has been an environmental advocate and professional for nearly 25 years, and has an M.S. in international affairs. He is a writer and editor and is the principal of Hewitt Communications, as well as the author of the Great Decisions Blog on Climate Change.