Sustainable Buildings

Twenty countries and sixty organizations decided to implement the Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction.  This is to create buildings and infrastructure that will reduce emissions and be more sustainable.  There are many NGO’s that are committing to green buildings around the world.  For example 27,000 companies are involved in World Green Building Council.  The International Union of Architects represents 1.3 million architects throughout the world.  There are ninety-one countries that have included elements of commitments or plans pertaining to buildings in their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions.  The population continues to grow and become more urbanized, therefore this initiative is very beneficial.  The overall goals of this action plan include: minimizing energy demand, greening the construction value chain, integrating renewables through district energy, implementing integrated building design and urban planning, and engaging financing institutions.  This plan will require a great deal of financial support.  For example an additional $220 billion dollars will need to be invested in this process by 2020, which is an enormous increase from what is currently being invested.  I find this committed so exciting, especially since it happened unexpectedly.  I am curious as to how Europe will follow through with this plan, with a lot of older and historical buildings.  I would like to find out more as to if this plan will mean only implementing this on new buildings or calling for revamping older buildings as well.  I know that we have done something like this here at CSB and I think it would be really interesting to get specifics on how our buildings here are more sustainable than before.